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EDITED BY 

STUART J. REID 



LOJ^D SALISBURY 



THE QUEEN'S PRIME MINISTERS 

A SERIES OF POLITICAL BIOGRAPHIES. 

EDITED BY 

STTJ^A^iaT cr. :ei:eixjd 

AUTHOR OF ' THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SYDNEY SMITH.' 



Tke volumes contain Photogravure Portraits 
also copies of Autographs. 

I. 

THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD, K.G. By J. A. Froude, D.C.L. 
(Fifth Edition.) 

II. 

VISCOUNT MELBOURNE. By Henry Dunckley, LL.D. (' Verax.') 

IIT. 

SIR ROBERT PEEL. By Justin McCarthy, M.P. 

IV. 
THE RIGHT . HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. By G. W. E. 

Russell. 

V. 

THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY. By H. D. Traill, D.C.L. 

VI. 

VISCOUNT PALMERSTON. By the Marquis of Lorn'e. 

vir. 

THE EARL OF DERBY. By George Saintsbury. 

VIII. 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. By Stuart J. Reid. 

IX. 
THE EARL OF ABERDEEN. By Sir Arthur Gordon, G.C.M.G. 



NEW YORK: 
HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square. 




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THE 



MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 



BY 



Hf'Df TRAILL, D.C.L. 




NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 








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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 



Birth and ancestry— Three Cecils— Early years— Eton and 
Christ Church— Foreign travel— Enters Parliament ; . 



CHAPTER II 

State of parties— The Coalition Government— The Crimean 
■war — University legislation — Maiden speech — Seconds 
'previous question' on Mr. Roebuck's motion — From the 
Crimea to China— Defeat of Lord Palmerston's Government- 
Dissolution 



CHAPTER III 

First essay in original legislation — Marriage — Fall of Lord 
Palmerston— Supports the union of the Danubian Princi- 
palities — The Reform question — Views of parties — The 
' Oxford Essay '—The Reform Bill of 1859— Its reception- 
Lord John Russell's amendment— Defeat of the Government 
—Dissolution and new Parliament *7 



vi THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 



CHAPTER IV 

PAGE 

The Whig feud healed— Lord John Russell's Reform Bill— Its 
neglect and withdrawal— Lord Robert Cecil in opposition — 
His militant attitude — The Paper Duties — Ministers and the 
* attorneys ' — Succeeds to the title of Lord Cranborne — New 
Parliament and death of Lord Palmerston— Reform Bill of 1866 
— Lord Cranborne on the working-man — And on the Bill — 
Defeat and resignation of the Russell Government . . 33 



CHAPTER V 

Enters Lord Derby's Cabinet as Secretary for India — The 
casuistry of the Great Surrender — Lord Derby's and Mr. 
Disraeli's respective shares in it — The Reform resolutions — 
Resignations of Lords Cranborne and Carnarvon, and General 
Peel — The confessions of Sir John Pakington — ' Ten Minutes 
Bill ' — Household suffrage with checks — Their disappearance 
— Votes and speeches of Lord Cranborne — Final protest — 
The Bill becomes law 61 



CHAPTER VI 

Relations of Lord Cranborne with Mr. Disraeli — The Irish Church 
resolutions — His attitude with regard to them — Becomes 
Marquis of Salisbury — The Suspensory Bill — In the Lords — 
Lord Salisbury's speech — Rejection of the Bill — Dissolution 
and new Parliament ........ 93 



CHAPTER VII 

Irish Church Disestablishment Bill — Lord Salisbury accepts and 
assists to pass it with amendments — Negotiates compromise 
— Parliamentary Procedure and Life Peerage Bills— Elected 
Chancellor of the University of Oxford— Irish Land Act of 



CONTENTS Vll 

PAGE 

1870 — Lord Salisbury on ' the Oracle ' — Army Purchase Bill 
and Royal Warrant — Increasing unpopularity of the Govern- 
ment — Collier and Ewelme Rectory Scandal — Defeat of the 
Irish University Bill— Dissolution and Conservative victory 
at the polls— Mr, Gladstone resigns 104 



CHAPTER VIII 

The New Government— Again Secretary for India — The Bengal 
Famine — Lord Northbrook and Sir George Campbell — The 
Public Worship Regulation Bill— Opposed by Lord Salisbury 
in the Lords— Mr. Gladstone's Six Resolutions— The Prime 
Minister adopts the Bill — Sadducees and phylacteries — The 
Bill returned to the Lords — Lord Salisbury rebukes ' bluster ' 
— The Prime Minister on his colleagues — A ' master of 
flouts and jeers ' — Sessions of 1875 and 1876 . . .116 



CHAPTER IX 

The Eastern Question — Differences of English opinion thereon— 
The views of the Government — Lord Salisbury's mission to 
Constantinople— His policy and that of his colleagues — The 
preliminary sittings — The Conference— Obstinacy of the 
Turks — A final appeal— Returns to London— Lord Beacons- 
field's defence . . . . . . • . .129 



CHAPTER X 

Declaration of war — The ' Charter of English Policy ' — Anxiety 
in England — The ' large maps ' — Progress of the" war and 
fall of Plevna — Differences in the Cabinet — Lord Carnarvon 
on the Crimean war — His resignation — Fleet despatched to 
the Bosphorus — The Reserves called out — Resignation of 
Lord Derby — Explanations in the House of Lords . • 149 



viii THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 



CHAPTER XI 

PAGE 

Lord Salisbury becomes Foreign Secretary — The Salisbury 
Circular — Its effect— Agreement for a congress — The ' un- 
authentic' memorandum — Ministerial answers and their 
defence— The Treaty of Berlin— The Afghan war— Mr. 
Gladstone's ' passionate pilgrimage ' — The elections of 1880 . 167 



CHAPTER XII 

Mr. Gladstone's ' little bills ' — Compensation for disturbance — 
Death of Lord Beaconsfield— Lord Salisbury chosen leader 
of the Conservative peers — His tactics— The Kilmainham 
Treaty and Arrears Bill— A chance missed — The Franchise Bill 
— Fall of Khartoum and escape of the Government— The Spirit 
Duties and fall of the Government — Lord Salisbury Prime 
Minister — His Cabinet — Dissolution and new Parliament — 
Eighty-six Irish votes, three acres, and a cow — Mr. Glad- 
stone in office again—' Examination and inquiry ' — The 
Home Rule Bill — Its defeat — Dissolution and its results . 185 



CHAPTER XIII 

Lord Salisbury enters upon his second Administration — Prop osal 
to Lord Hartington — The Premier as Foreign Secretary — 
His' record — Qualifications for the office — Personal charac- 
teristics — Eloquence and wit — Relations to his party and the 
country — His present position — His Ministerial career as a 
whole 205 



Index 221 



THE 

MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

CHAPTER I 

Birth and ancestry — Three Cecils — Early years — Eton and Christ 
Church — Foreign travel — Enters Parliament. 

'We have in 1890 a Prime Minister whose ancestors were 
similarly employed, to the great benefit of England, ten 
generations ago. Is not this a good? Is not this tie 
of lineage for him a link binding him to honour and to 
public virtue.' Thus, in defence of our English mode of 
regulating the devolution of property, honours, and oppor- 
tunities of public service, wrote Mr. Gladstone, in November 
of the year to which he refers. The passage has assuredly 
more grace of spirit than of form ; but the sentiment which 
animates it may well excuse its inelegance. Undoubtedly 
it is 'a good,' both for the country and for himself, that an 
EngHsh Prime Minister should be the descendant of men 
who were ' similarly employed ' — assuming that to mean 
men who were eminent Ministers themselves — three hundred 
years ago. Such hereditary attachments to ' honour and 
public virtue' have never been wanting, one is glad to 



2 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

remember, at any period of our history ; but it may be 
doubted whether the tie has ever been so strong, or the 
common eminence of the founders and the inheritor of the 
tradition so conspicuous as in the case of Lord SaHsbury. 
There have of course been examples of EngHsh Ministers 
able to trace descent from men who have themselves stood 
high in the confidence of their sovereign, and who, from 
that post of vantage, have exerted an influence over the 
destinies of their country. But from the point of view of 
authority and opportunity, the positions of the ancestor and 
of the descendant have seldom been so directly comparable 
as here. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other, has 
been the abler, the more powerful, the more renowned. In 
one ever-memorable instance, two statesmen, of whom 
each left an indelible mark on English and European 
history, stood one to the other in the relation of father and 
son. But that was an instance of the immediate succession 
to political genius, not of the atavism that ' throws back ' to 
it. Our annals furnish no other earlier example of the 
highest place in the State being filled, at an interval of 
nearly ten generations between the second and third of the 
series, by three statesmen of the same family, each in turn 
supreme in the councils of the Crown, and each so pre-emi- 
nent in ability and authority among their contemporaries as 
William Cecil, first Earl of Burleigh, Robert Cecil, first Earl 
of Salisbury, and Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne Cecil, 
third Marquis of the latter name. 

This distinguished descendant of famous forefathers 
was born at Hatfield on February 13, 1830, and is the 
second son of James Brownlow William, second Marquis 
of Salisbury. His father, also in his degree an inheritor of 
the family inclination towards an active public life, was 



ETON AND CHRIST CHURCH 3 

himself a politician of some note and importance, who 
twice in his career attained to the dignity of Cabinet 
Minister. He held the office of Lord Privy Seal in Lord 
Derby's first Administration in 1852, and that of Lord 
President of the Council under the second Premiership of 
the same Minister in 1858. His son Robert was trained 
for public life in those two famous seminaries which have 
reared so many distinguished statesmen, his eminent pre- 
decessor in his present post among the number. He left 
Eton for Christ Church in 1847, and after a stay of two 
years at Oxford took his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1849. 
Circumstances prevented him from offering himself as a 
candidate for honours, but the credit with which he ac- 
quitted himself in the pass examination was rewarded, as was 
then the custom, by the unsolicited (and what was often the 
undesired) distinction of an ' honorary fourth.' His short 
career at the University was marked by intellectual activities 
of other than the strictly academic kind. Like many another 
young Englishman destined, in later years, ' the applause of 
listening senates to command,' he took an active part in the 
debates of the Oxford Union Society, and held at one time 
the office of treasurer, a post filled many years later by one 
of his sons. There is, unfortunately, no Hansard of the 
Oxford Union ; it lacks and has always lacked that vates 
sacer of the political orator ; and the debating club speeches 
of Lord Robert Cecil between his seventeenth and nine- 
teenth years must be left, like the doughty deeds of the 
heroes before Agamemnon, to 'rest in endless night un- 
known.' The records of the Society supply us only with 
particulars of the subjects which stirred him to eloquence 
We know that on one occasion he ' supported the drama 
with Professor Conington against the late Professor Shirley 



4 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

and the present (now the late) Dean of Chichester.' * 
Here imagination is left without much assistance from any 
later deliverances of the speaker, in the work of conjectur- 
ally reconstructing his argument. We can speculate with 
much more confidence on the kind of speech in which he 
urged upon the Conservative party, rent asunder by the 
repeal of the Corn Laws, the necessity of reuniting to 
' provide England with a stronger government than the 
Liberals were able to give her ' ; or on the line adopted by 
him in moving a resolution deprecatory of the endowment 
of the Roman Catholic priesthood in Ireland ; or, above 
all, on the tenor of his ' strong condemnation of the disso- 
lution of the monasteries by Henry VHI.,' and his ' emphatic 
protest against the disestablishment of the English Church.' 
It is in oratory almost more than in anything else, as has 
been truly said, that the boy's paternal relation to the man 
is the most distinctly traceable, and could we recover these 
lost speeches of Lord Robert Cecil, we should doubtless 
find much in them to remind us of Lord Cranborne and 
perhaps even something which we still notice in Lord 
Salisbury. It does not seem very hazardous to surmise that 
these speeches were of the militantly controversial rather 
than the academical and didactic order ; that they were 
vehement in tone, confident in statement, caustic in 
criticism, more remarkable for the dash and spirit with 
which the youthful combatant attacked the position of the 
enemy than for the prudence with which he selected and 
fortified his own. 

' ' Life and Speeches of the Marquis of Salisbury, K.G., by F. S. 
Pulling, M.A. ; a carefully compiled record of the Prime Minister's 
public acts, and an excellently selected collection of extracts from the 
reports of his public utterances, in both of which characters it has been 
consulted with much advantage in the preparation of this volumes 



ENTERS PARLIAMENT 5 

The next year or two after quitting Oxford were spent in 
foreign travel — not merely on the 'grand tour,' whereby the 
young aspirant to political distinction was wont in the last 
century to prepare himself for public life, but in a far wider 
kind of peregrination, which took in many of the British 
Colonies, and extended even to so distant a portion of the 
Empire as New Zealand. On his return to England, in 1853, 
Lord Robert Cecil was elected a fellow of All Souls ; and, 
shortly afterwards, the retirement of Mr. Herries from the 
representation of Stamford created for him the desired 
opportunity of entering Parliament. That constituency was, 
of course, one to which the name of Cecil would have 
recommended a candidate of less promise than he who was 
now offering himself, in the summer of 1853, to its electors. 
On August 22 he was returned without opposition, and 
at the beginning of the next session took that seat in the 
House of Commons which he was to hold with unbroken 
tenure and with steadily growing reputation for the next 
fifteen years. 



THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 



CHAPTER II 

State of parties — The Coalition Government — The Crimean war — 
University legislation — Maiden speech — Seconds ' previous ques- 
tion' on Mr. Roebuck's motion — From the Crimea to China — 
Defeat of Lord Palmerston's Government — Dissolution. 

The prospect before the Parliamentary party in whose 
Tanks the young recruit had taken his place was discouraging 
enough. A brief tenure of office two years earlier had 
sufficed to prove that the effect of the great convulsion of 
1846 was far from having exhausted itself. Numerically 
strengthened though they had been by the election of 1852, 
the Conservatives had made no progress towards removing 
the main cause of their moral weakness — the schism in their 
party on the policy of Free Trade. Protectionism still 
survived among them as an aspiration and a pious opinion, 
with no power to express itself as a principle or a policy. 
Free Traders accordingly, of whatever party, regarded them 
with more or less distrust ; and their own seceding Free 
Traders, the Peelites, were drifting daily closer and closer 
to that abyss of Liberalism in which they were destined to 
be engulfed. The formation of the Coalition Ministry under 
Lord Aberdeen appeared, doubtless, to many Conservatives 
to be no very hopeful experiment ; but it was rightly 
recognised by them as irrevocably determining the connec- 
tion of the leading Peelites with their former party. No one 



STATE OF PARTIES 7 

expected that Mr. Gladstone, or Sir James Graham, or Mr. 
Sidney Herbert would ever sit again in a Tory Cabinet ; 
and they were men whom, whether as debaters or counsel- 
lors, a Tory Cabinet of the future could ill spare. For the 
Tory party, although not wanting in politicians of marked 
ability, well considered among their own order, had but 
little in the way of approved and accredited statesman- 
ship to offer to the country. Their leader. Lord Derby, 
commanded the almost unbounded respect which always 
attaches among Englishmen to any public man who 
reinforces the hereditary claims of a great noble, born of 
an historic house, with the graces of the accomplished orator 
and scholar. But his name was not then, and never at any 
time became, a name ' to conjure with.' The reputation of 
his brilliant lieutenant, Mr. Disraeli, was almost wholly 
confined to the House of Commons ; and, though his con- 
summate powers as a debater almost assured to him the 
leadership of his party in that assembly, whatever vicissitudes 
might be in store for him and them, he had not then succeeded, 
and he did not, in truth, for many years to come succeed, in 
winning the confidence of the nation. His staff in the 
Lower House was made up of men like Sir John Pakington, 
Mr. Spencer Walpole, and others — politicians of un- 
questioned competence in affairs, but not exactly towers of 
strength either in a Parliamentary debate or an electoral cam- 
paign. In repute for high administrative capacity and financial 
talent, the Opposition were, to say the least of it, somewhat 
weak ; yet it was for finance and administration that the 
public of that day were most anxious to provide. The admin- 
istrative capacity of the Coalition Government was largely, 
though as the event proved disastrously, taken on trust ; but 
there was some ground for the belief that the national 



8 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

finances might be more safely entrusted to the disciples 
than to the enemies of Peel. Meanwhile those other 
supremely important desiderata in an English Cabinet— ^fore- 
sight, to wit, in foreign affairs, and judgment and resolution 
in dealing therewith — had almost disappeared from the list 
of ministerial qualifications. The prophets of the Man- 
chester Millennium were in the heyday of their confidence 
in themselves, and at the zenith of their influence over 
others. That deceptive flush which enthusiasts mistook 
for the dawn of a new era had not yet faded from the sky. 
The gigantic Hyde Park Conservatory of 1851 was still 
supposed to have effectually done its work as a forcing-house 
for the plant of international good-will. Cobden was still, 
with widespread acceptance, preaching the doctrine that 
Free Trade was destined to overrun the globe, and become an 
oecumenical peacemaker. In a word, the beatific vision of 
a kindly earth asleep, or about to sink in slumber, ' lapped 
in universal law,' glowed still before the eyes of multitudes 
of Englishmen ; and if a few others perceived on the 
eastern horizon a little cloud shaped like the hand of the 
Czar Nicholas outstretched in the direction of Constanti- 
nople, it is probable that fewer still foresaw how soon 
the heaven would be 'black with clouds and wind,' and 
still less how short a time was to elapse before the 
great storm actually burst. In short, the English public 
of that day had made up their mind — and the per- 
suasion tended naturally to strengthen the 'Ins' and to 
weaken the ' Outs ' — that the country was ' in for a long 
innings ' of peace and prosperity ; that all it wanted in the 
way of Government was a Cabinet of men of business who 
would keep internal order, and manage its finances husband- 
like, and for the rest let the people alone as much as possible 



UNIVERSITY LEGISLATION 9 

to * develop the material resources ' of the country, as a 
now consecrated phrase has it, by means of Free Trade ; 
while as for any risk of external quarrel, why, if it were too 
much to say that the soldier might definitively deliver up 
sword and spear for conversion into ploughshare and 
pruning-hook, there was at least no reason why the Foreign 
Minister should not lock up his despatch boxes, and give 
himself an indefinite holiday. 

Rude, indeed, was the awakening of these dreamers ; 
and it was now near at hand. In August 1853, when Lord 
Robert Cecil was elected for Stamford, the unconscious 
nation and its nerveless Government were drifting fast to- 
wards the catastrophe which was to open the eyes of both. 
The troops of the Czar were already in occupation of the 
Danubian PrincipaHties, the Vienna Note had failed, 
and the war feeling was rising not only among the people 
but even in a certain section of the Cabinet. When Par- 
hament met in February 1854, the crisis was imminent, 
for on the 27th of that month Lord Clarendon despatched 
the ultimatum to Russia, upon the rejection of which by 
the Czar Nicholas war was declared. It seems a strange 
moment at which to illustrate the Roman poet's Cedantarma 
iogcB by the introduction of a piece of academical legislation. 
But Governments after all can hardly occupy their whole 
time, and employ the energies of all their various depart- 
ments, in merely blundering into European wars. In those 
days it was not, as in these, considered a point of honour with 
Administrations to shield a session from the reproach of 
' barrenness ' ; but most Governments even then liked to have 
something to show in the way of legislation, and accordingly 
Lord John Russell, who in 1850 had procured the appoint- 
ment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the condition of 



10 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

the Universities, now came forward with a Bill for giving 
legislative effect to the recommendations contained in the 
voluminous report presented by the Commission in 1852. 
It was on the second reading of this measure, on April 7, 
1854, that Lord Robert Cecil delivered his maiden speech 
in the House of Commons. 

Lord John Russell's Bill was the first invitation to the 
Legislature and the Universities to enter on that path 
along which they have since travelled so far and with 
such increasingly doubtful results. It was the beginning 
of that course of academic horticulture which has uprooted 
a few weeds of comparatively harmless abuse to plant and 
rear a crop of noxious crotchets in their place. It was the 
initial step in the attempted realisation of that pretentious 
policy which sought to achieve a visionary restoration of 
the Oxford of the twelfth century, by laying the axe to the 
noble growths of the thirteenth and fourteenth, and their 
succeeding ages — the policy which has since gone far to 
destroy the colleges without re-animating the ancient idea 
of the University, which has multiplied prelections and 
diminished hearers, fattened professors and thinned 
audiences, endowed new branches of learning with one 
hand, while with the other bribing honour-hunting 
students to neglect them, and which has now at last 
carried the peculiar principles of its advocates to such a 
pitch of unexpected and undesired success, that they are 
helplessly calling out for a third Commission to undo the 
work of the other two. 

The issues of this notable movement were not ot 
course to be fully foreseen when the Oxford University 
Bill was presented for second reading to the House of 
Commons ; but its spirit was manifested with sufficient 



MAIDEN SPEECH II 

clearness to arouse against it all the Conservative instincts 
of the young member for Stamford. He fastened at once 
upon that fundamental iniquity which an older member of his 
University, Professor Mansel, was afterwards to hold up to 
public reprobation, in one of the wittiest and most eloquent 
pieces of verse which the immortal mockery of Aristophanes 
has ever inspired. It was the thesis of the admirable dis- 
putation between Adikos and Dikaios Logos, in the 
' Phrontisterion,' which Lord Robert Cecil sought in the 
following passage to enforce : 

What seemed to him the main objection to the Bill was that 
it swept away at one blow all the preferences which the founders 
of colleges had shown for the place of their birth, all the pre- 
ferences for the schools with which they had been connected, 
all the preferences for kindred, with the exception of one, the 
generosity of which could not fail to be appreciated — it proposed 
to admit the lineal descendants of the founders. This exception 
was little better than an insult, for, with two exceptions, he 
believed not one of the founders had left lineal descendants at 
all. An hon. gentleman who supported the confiscation of 
fellowships argued that the founder had no right to tie up the 
property for generations and for centuries. But then, if that 
were so, the analogy of private estates ought to be followed, 
and if the will of the founder was to be overturned, let the pro- 
perty return to the heir in the natural course of law. 

Sir John Pakington, he went on to say, had very ably 
argued the constitutional grounds on which this Bill ought 
to be rejected. But he would himself prefer, he said, to 
rely upon a ' narrower and mere commercial ground which, 
he thought, would appeal more closely to popular sym- 
pathies ; namely, that if they squandered in this manner 
the endowments of the various founders, they would have 
no more endowments to deal with again.' And the speaker 



12 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

concluded with awarning, destined to be abundantly justified, 
against attaching credit to the assurance of * finality,' with 
which the academic ' reformer,' like every other variety of 
the same species, accompanied their proposals of reform. 

The compliments which, by the good-natured tradition 
of the House, are generally bestowed upon a maiden speech, 
are not, of course, to be accepted literally in all cases ; but 
there was a note of more than common earnestness in the 
graceful eulogy pronounced by Mr. Gladstone, speaking 
evidently some hours afterwards, on the young member 
whose ' first efforts, rich with future promise, indicate that 
there still issue forth from the maternal bosom of the 
University men who, in the first days of their career, give 
earnest of what they may afterwards accomplish for their 
country.' 

There is, however, still better evidence of the rapid 
Parliamentary success of the member for Stamford in the 
fact that little more than a year after the delivery of his 
maiden speech he received the honour of being ' cast ' for 
a part of no little distinction in a Parliamentary drama of 
historic celebrity. To be selected on behalf of a controlling 
section of a great party to second a motion of the ' previous 
question ' in the debate on a Vote of Censure means some- 
thing much more, of course, than the complimentary selec- 
tion of a young member to move or second the Address in reply 
to a Speech from the Throne ; and it was to no less impor- 
tant a function than the former that Lord Robert Cecil was 
designated on July 17, 1855. This was the night on which 
Mr. Roebuck moved that famous resolution founded upon 
the report of the Sebastopol Committee, which, if it had 
been carried, would have affixed the seal of Parliament to 
the sentence of condemnation which history has pronounced 



MR. roebuck's resolution 



13 



on the incapable administrators responsible for the disasters 
of the Crimea. It invited the House to record its sorrow 
for the sufferings of our army during the previous winter, to 
approve of the resolution of its Committee that * the conduct 
of the Administration was the first and chief cause of the 
calamities that befell that army,' and to ' visit with severe 
reprehension every member of that Cabinet whose counsels 
led to such disastrous results.' No one doubts now, as few 
doubted then, that this stern sentence of condemnation 
was deserved. But the peccant Government had been 
expelled from office with ignominy six months before ; their 
successors, now purged of the Peelite element of weakness 
which they had inherited from the defunct Cabinet, and 
cleared by Lord John Russell's resignation of the national 
distrust to which his presence in the Government had 
exposed them, seemed inclined to prosecute the war with 
vigour ; and on the whole, therefore, it appeared to an in- 
fluential section of the Opposition that a Vote of Censure 
upon past Ministerial mismanagement would be inopportune. 
It was accordingly resolved among them that Mr. Roebuck's 
resolution should be shelved, and General Peel, a Tory of 
unimpeachable orthodoxy, was deputed to move, and Lord 
Robert Cecil to second, the ' previous question.' 

It is not impossible that the selection of a seconder 
may have been in part determined by the able speech in 
which some weeks before he had reviewed the Vienna 
negotiations in a debate on a motion of Mr. Disraeli's, 
and had adversely criticised, on grounds which the events 
of fifteen years later did much to justify, the proposal to 
close the Black Sea in perpetuity to the Russian flag of 
war. The Parliamentary manoeuvre in which he was now 
called upon to take a leading part was one the prudence 



14 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

and patriotism of which would hardly, I imagine, be 
contested by any Conservative of the present day. But it 
was not the line of the official Opposition. Party feeling 
ran high, and was complicated in many cases by personal 
antipathies. Mr. Roebuck's motion, nominally directed 
against the extinct Coalition Ministry, was in reality aimed 
(as its mover showed by ostentatiously excepting the late 
War Minister and two of his Peelite colleagues from his , 
censure) at Lord Palmerston ; and its adoption by the 
House would have compelled the Premier's resignation. 
The public mind had been deeply shocked at the state of 
things which the Sebastopol Committee had brought to 
light ; and it was, no doubt, technically open to the Oppo- 
sition leaders to plead the novelty of these disclosures in 
reply to those who taunted them with having been willing to 
form a Government in conjunction with Lord Palmerston six 
months before. Nevertheless it is impossible to justify the 
course pursued on that occasion by the official Opposition 
from any national point of view. Lord Palmerston was at that 
moment, as was well known — nay, as had been experimen- 
tally proved — the only possible First Minister of the Crown. 
Not only every other candidate but every other combination 
had been tried in vain. After the fall of the Aberdeen 
Government, Lord Derby had vainly attempted, at her 
Majesty's request, to construct another Coalition Cabinet ; 
Lord Lansdowne had been sent for to advise the Queen ; 
even Lord John Russell, the Minister who had abandoned 
his colleagues at the first whisper of the rising storm, had 
been solicited to attempt, and had attempted, the hopeless 
task of persuading the men whom he had deserted to rally 
to his side. It was only after a prolonged and anxious 
ministerial crisis that Lord Palmerston had at last succeeded 



THE ' PREVIOUS QUESTION ' 1 5 

in forming a Government ; which, moreover, within a few 
days after meeting Parliament, was convulsed by the re- 
signation of three of its not least important members. To 
displace it at such a moment — a moment when an appeal 
to the constituencies was out of the question — meant 
leaving the country indefinitely without a Government, 
or at the mercy of a series of * transient and embar- 
rassed ' ministerial phantoms : and this in the very throes 
of a European war ! Undoubtedly the leaders of the 
Opposition would have incurred a very grave responsibility 
if Mr. Roebuck's motion had been carried, and they owed 
(though it is probable that they were very far from feeling) 
gratitude to General Peel, Lord Robert Cecil, and their 
followers for having saved them. The mover of the 'previous 
question ' supported it mainly from the point of view of a 
military critic who held that the House had not at present 
before them the materials for a safe judgment either on the 
policy or the conduct of the expedition to the Crimea. 
Lord Robert Cecil opposed Mr. Roebuck's resolution as 
* historical and retrospective,' and pointed out the dangers 
of establishing a precedent for attacking the policy of ex- 
Ministers. The resolution was supported in the debate by 
Mr. Disraeli, Sir John Pakington, and other official or 
influential members of the Opposition, and the minority of 
182 which voted for it contained a considerable majority of 
the Conservative party. 

Early in the year 1856, the conclusion of peace with 
Russia left Parliament at liberty to devote itself to matters 
of domestic interest, and the member for Stamford, who 
was evidently animated in full measure with those feelings 
of dislike and regret with which the Conservative party in 
general regarded the Crimean war, returned, no doubt with 



1 6 THE MARQtJIS OF SALISBURY 

a sense of relief, to the undistracted consideration of 
questions connected with elementary education and the 
improvement of the reformatory system. His interest in 
these subjects, especially in the former, had always been 
lively, and the part — active and watchful, without de- 
generating into fussiness — which he took in the discussion 
of them during the session of 1856, gave further proof to 
the House of Commons that he possessed constructive as 
well as critical ability. 

His opportunities, however, of promoting or opposing 
legislation in the then existent Parliament were to be 
speedily cut short. In the Spring of 1857 the Chinese 
Government were ill-advised enough to present Lord 
Palmerston with one of those chances for a display of what 
would now be called 'Jingoism,' but was then more 
flatteringly described as a 'spirited foreign policy,' which 
that veteran swaggerer seldom missed. In the previous 
autumn the Chinese had seized the lorcha ' Arrow,' under 
circumstances raising a contention not necessary here to be 
revived; and in a trice we found ourselves engaged in a 
Chinese war. The Conservative party united with the Peelites 
and Radicals in denouncing Lord Palmerston's proceed- 
ings ; Lord Robert Cecil spoke and voted with his party. A 
motion of censure was carried against Ministers by 263 votes 
to 247 ; whereupon they appealed to the country, and were 
sent back again to power with a largely-increased majority. 
The popular verdict was beyond question pronounced not 
only on the author of the Chinese war, but on the Minister 
who had ' stood in the gap ' in the midst of the Crimean 
struggle. Vengeance descended on the peace party, and 
Mr, Bright and Mr. Cobden lost their seats. Lord Robert 
Cecil was returned for Stamford unopposed. 



i; 



CHAPTER III 

First essay in original legislation— Marriage — Fall of Lord Palmel"- 
ston — Supports the union of the Danubian Principalities — The 
Reform question — Views of parties — The ' Oxford Essay ' — The 
Reform Bill of 1859— Its reception — Lord John Russell's amend- 
ment — Defeat of the Government — Dissolution and new Parlia- 
ment. 

It was in the first session of the new Parliament which 
met in April 1857 that Lord Robert Cecil made his first 
appearance as a proposer of legislation. He introduced a 
Bill to amend the procedure at Parliamentary elections by 
substituting a voting-paper system for that of personal 
attendance at a polling station for the purpose of recording 
the vote. To use his own words, he wished that ' the poll 
should be brought to the elector, instead of the elector to 
the poll.' Such a proposal, obvious as are its superficial 
recommendations, is no doubt obnoxious to several more 
or less serious objections ; it is interesting to note that by 
far the weightiest of them — the objection, that is to say, 
to the private performance of so responsible a public duty 
— has been stultified by the introduction of the ballot. 
The interests of public order and of private freedom of 
action would unquestionably have been the gainers by the 
adoption of a voting-paper system. Riot and disorder 
would have been put an end to ; intimidation within doors 
and without, by mob or master, would have become the one 

c 



1 8 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

impossible, the other much more difficult than in the case 
of open polling ; the number of electors actually voting 
at any contested election would have been largely in- 
creased. Against each of these recommendations, however, 
it was possible in 1858 to set its countervailing draw- 
back. Popular turbulence, it might have been said, should 
never be allowed such a triumph over the peaceful citizen 
as to drive him to perform in private an act which ought 
certainly to be performed, if possible, in the presence of his 
fellows. As to intimidation, the capacity of resisting it 
is a pre-supposed condition of the elector's fitness to 
exercise the franchise, and the best test of that capacity is 
to require him to exercise it in public. And whether the 
habitual abstentionist were prevented by timidity or by 
indifference from recording his vote under the present 
system, he was disentitled, on either hypothesis, to claim the 
proposed alteration of the law. Except upon the assump- 
tion that the citizen not only has opinions, and the courage 
of them, but cares enough about them to desire their 
prevalence in the national policy, representative government 
becomes an absurdity. And if the citizen has, in fact, 
opinions, and the courage of them, and the desire to assert 
them, the least he can do in proof thereof is to take what- 
ever trouble and incur whatever risk of disagreeable incidents 
may be involved in the journey to a public polling-booth 
to record his vote. 

Replies of this kind had cogency and consistency enough 
in 1858 ; and they availed. The demand for the ballot 
only flourished in those days as a ' hardy annual,' introduced 
each session by Mr. Berkeley, and supported by a mere 
handful of Radicals. Hence the majority of Lord Robert 
Cecil's Liberal opponents on the question may, perhaps, be 



MARRIAGE 1 9 

charitably acquitted of insincerity, as not having foreseen 
that they were themselves one day destined to accept a 
legislative measure which would make their professed 
repugnance to private voting appear retrospectively hypo- 
critical. The Bill had, of course, to be withdrawn ; but the 
eminent applicability of its principle to the case of the 
University constituencies — the electors of which may 
reside in many cases a couple of hundred miles from the 
scene of the contest — was recognised in the Reform Act 
of ten years later. 

The year 1857 is rendered further notable to the bio- 
grapher of Lord Robert Cecil as being the date of his 
marriage with Georgina Caroline, eldest daughter of Sir 
Edmund Hall Alderson, Baron of the Exchequer, and a judge 
whose brilliant academical career had given promise of the 
distinction both for profound learning and for judicial 
acumen which he was afterwards destined to attain. 

The following year was politically eventful : for it was in 
1858 that the attack on the life of the Emperor Napoleon III. 
impelled Lord Palmerston to that ill-starred attempt to 
amend the English law of conspiracy which, by one of the 
most surprising catastrophes ever recorded in our political 
history, resulted in the defeat of a Minister whom the con- 
stituencies had less than a year before re-established in 
power at the head of a triumphant majority. Lord Derby 
received and obeyed the Queen's commands to form a new 
Government, and, despite the comparative weakness of the 
Conservative party, his conduct of the national affairs both 
at home and abroad during the remainder of the session of 
1858 was conspicuously successful. The new Administration 
not only effected an amicable settlement of the unfortunate 
misunderstanding with Francej but succeeded in passing the 

c 2 



20 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

very important measure by which the East India Company 
was abolished, and the control of Indian administration 
vested in a Secretary of State, advised by a council. 

In the course of the session two questions drew 
the member for Stamford into participation in debate, and 
the opinions respectively expressed by him upon each of 
them supply a good illustration of his contrasted views 
upon foreign and domestic policy. In his strenuous oppo- 
sition to the Bill for the total abolition of Church rates, he 
proved the unimpeachable orthodoxy of his ecclesiastical 
Toryism ; in his support of the claims of the two Danubian 
Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia to effect the union 
denied to them by the Treaty of 1856, he shewed himself 
more Liberal in his foreign policy than the Liberals them- 
selves. The Whig diplomatist of the old school was 
seriously apprehensive of the danger to the * integrity and 
independence of the Ottoman Empire ' which such a union 
seemed to him to portend. Lord Robert Cecil contended 
with much abihty and earnestness that the consoHdation of 
the two Principalities would strengthen Turkey by provid- 
ing her with a new bulwark against Russian aggression. 

Here, then, we have an anticipation by exactly twenty 
years of the arguments of the famous despatch in which 
Lord Beaconsfield's colleague at the Berlin Congress de- 
fended the emancipation of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia 
from Ottoman rule. Opinions may differ as to the sound- 
ness of the analogy on which this argument is founded ; 
and events have certainly not been quite so complaisant to 
the later contention as to the earlier. If Turkey has 
gained strength from the erection of the two Danubian 
Principalities into the kingdom of Roumania, it can hardly 
be said that she is the stronger for the existence of that 



REFORM 'IN THE AIR' 21 

Principality over which Ferdinand of Coburg maintains a 
precarious and distracted rule. 

The replacement of a Liberal by a Conservative 
Administration produced its usual effect of scandalised 
astonishment upon the ousted party. They felt, as Whigs 
in Opposition always have felt, such an incident to be a 
reproach to Parliamentary Government to which it behoved 
them, not merely as partisans but as patriots, to put a 
speedy end ; and by a happy, but not an unprecedented, 
coincidence it struck them at the same moment that the 
settlement of a great political question, in which they had 
seemed to take but a languid interest while in office, would 
now brook no longer delay. The national demand for a 
Reform Bill had become in their opinion too imperious to 
be safely left unsatisfied ; and by way of proving its impe- 
riousness they proceeded to enter upon what might have 
been thought a superfluous campaign of agitation in its 
favour. 

The labours of the stump-orator were prosecuted with 
unintermittent assiduity throughout 1858, and agitators did 
their best, by the incessant emission of the popular catch- 
word from their lips on scores of platforms, to justify their 
assertion that Reform was ' in the air.' Endeavours to dis- 
cuss it after a more methodical and reflective fashion than 
commends itself to the stump-orator were not however 
wantirlg. The volume of ' Oxford Essays ' published in this 
year contained a paper by Lord Robert Cecil on 'The 
Theories of Parliamentary Reform' which is of much 
interest, not only as an exposition of his then opinions, but 
as an indication of his future conduct at a momentous political 
crisis. The writer's views on the existing condition of the 
electoral system were substantially those held by the main 



22 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

body of the Conservative party, and, it may be added, in 
all probability by a clear majority of the Liberals of that 
day. The position, in fact, of both the schools of political 
opinion may be defined with substantial accuracy by saying 
that they were not opposed to such enlargement of the 
electorate as would extend to the then unrepresented classes 
of the community as large a share of the national represen- 
tation as could be given them without making mere 
numbers predominant over every other element of power 
in the State. I believe that, if we exclude a few high Tories 
on the one hand and the, in those days, insignificant group 
of Radical Reformers on the other, the above formula 
would, with virtually complete accuracy, express the views 
of the two great political parties, and would have defined 
the principle on which, but for 'the party system,' they 
could and might have united to pass a Reform Act. 

Of course it does not need saying that any two distinct 
groups of politicians might hold this common doctrine 
' with a difference,' and with a difference of much practical 
importance. One of them, that is to say, might be of 
opinion that while the reconstruction of our electoral 
system on the above lines was theoretically defensible it 
was not practically needful, and certainly not urgent; that 
the existing anomalies of the system were the source of no 
appreciable injury either to the State or the individual ; and 
that there was no national demand for their removal. The 
other group of politicians might contrariwise contend that 
the case for electoral reform was not less strong on the 
practical than on the theoretical side; that the anomalies 
of the existing system were mischievous as well as disfiguring'; 
and that their removal was demanded, if not with passion, at 
any rate with earnestness, by the nation at large. 



THE 'OXFORD ESSAY' 23 

It is natural to expect, and it is not difficult to infer 
from the tone of this particular Oxford essayist, that he 
would belong to the former class of politicians. Probably 
it included most of the Conservative party of that day. A 
few of them may have been misled by the agitation into 
believing in the existence of a genuine and effective popular 
demand for an enlargement of the franchise. The majority 
of them held, one may suspect, and as the event proved 
rightly held, that in the year 1858 the cry which the agitators 
professed to hear was simply the echo of their own voices. 
As to the Liberals, they seem to have entertained two 
successive and not easily reconcilable views on the subject. 
They must have arrived, by 1859 at any rate, at the conclu- 
sion that the country was greatly interested in the question 
of Parliamentary Reform. At least, it is only charitable to 
assume as much, because in that year they threw out a 
moderate Franchise Bill on the ground of its inadequacy to 
the satisfaction of the national wishes, and expelled its 
authors from power. Inasmuch, however, as after succeeding 
to office their leaders shelved the question for six years to 
their apparently complete contentment, we are bound to 
assume that at some time after the general election and 
the vote of want of confidence which displaced Lord Derby, 
their opinion on this point underwent an entire change. 

Lord Robert Cecil's Oxford essay pretty clearly ranks 
him, as has been said, among that plainer-spoken section of 
the Tory party, who, while admitting that our electoral system 
was theoretically open to improvement, made no conceal- 
ment of their opinion that it were better left alone. Re- 
formers, the essayist pointed out, might be divided into 
three classes, two of them contemplating ends desirable in 
themselves, but impracticable of attainment and hazardous 



24 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

of pursuit, the third frankly seeking such changes in the 
representative system as would, in the writer's opinion, be 
dangerously disturbing to the political equilibrium of the 
nation. The first description of reformer, the Educational, 
as the essayist calls him, started from the principle that go- 
vernment should be in the hands of the wisest men, but had 
never been able to propound any practical means of giving 
effect to that principle in our electoral system. This class 
of reformer is therefore dismissed by the writer as speedily 
as is consistent with respect for his character and motives. 
His presence made itself felt once more for a moment in 
certain clauses of the Conservative Reform Bill of the fol- 
lowing year ; but that brief appearance was his last. The 
painful duty of bowing him, however politely, out of court 
has not since devolved upon any political writer, and there 
is no reason to expect that it ever will again. The philo- 
sopher who theorised, thirty years ago, on the possibility of 
committing the work of government to the hands of the 
' wisest men ' is not likely to trouble the ' practical politician ' 
any more. He is, indeed, understood to have transferred 
his energies to the task of discovering a finite arithmetical 
ratio between the diameter and the circumference of the 
circle. 

The 'Symmetrical Reformer,' as Lord Robert Cecil 
names his second sort of doctrinaire, we have still with us, 
though somewhat in the state of the jaded Alexander, with 
no more worlds to conquer. His share in carrying that 
Reform of the representative system which was then in 
prospect was less important than that of the third, the 
' Democratic ' order of reformer (' Geographical,' as the 
essayist alternatively styles him, he hardly became till six- 
teen years later), whose ideal of a bare numerical system of 



THE 'OXFORD ESSAY' 25 

representation was in effect realised in 1867. It is interest- 
ing to remark, and it reflects credit upon the stability and 
consistency of Lord Robert Cecil's political judgment, that the 
views to which he was destined to sacrifice place and power 
nine years afterwards, are plainly indicated in his remarks 
on reform of the Democratic variety. He would be pre- 
pared, he said, to accept even universal suffrage modified 
by a plural vote based upon a property qualification ; but 
the notion of placing the dominant political power with- 
out any check or counterpoise in the hands of the least 
educated and least responsible class in the country, was 
not, he held, to be for a moment entertained. Little did 
he then dream that his leader was destined to do this 
very thing ; and perhaps that leader suspected it as little 
himself. 

Nevertheless, it was the Democratic Reformer's prin- 
ciples that distinctly triumphed in the Reform Act of 
1867. He too, it was, who in 1884 succeeded, as Demo- 
cratic Reformer, in adding * two millions of capable citizens ' 
to the register, and, as Geographical Ditto, in carving up 
the counties into approximately equal electoral districts. In 
the two latter operations he was, of course, assisted by the 
Symmetrical Reformer, who, indeed, has taken much of 
the moral responsibility off his shoulders. This coadjutor 
pointed out, with considerable effect, that the consequences 
of the Reform Act of 1867 had been to create a grossly 
unjust distribution of political power as between the urban 
and the rural population. In other words, he contended that 
since the Democratic Reformer had, in the name of political 
justice, enormously aggravated an unfair disparity in repre- 
sentation as between two large classes of the community, he 
himself had thereby, in the character of the Symmetrical Re- 



26 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

former, acquired a right to make another enormous addition 
to the roll of household-voters for the purpose of correcting 
the anomaly. 

In 1858, however, he had not gained such a hearing as 
he afterwards enjoyed. Lord Robert Cecil admitted, in 
his essay, the existence of many anomalies in our repre- 
sentative system, and he laid especial stress on the dispro- 
portion of the borough to the county electorate. But he 
was not prepared to correct anomalies for symmetry's sake 
alone, and without adequate security against the imperilling 
of those main objects of wise government and national sta- 
bility for which representative systems exist. And this leads 
him to the conclusion, fatal, of course, from a Conservative 
point of view, to any proposals of innovation, that ' we must 
either change enormously, or not at all.' It is ' undoubtedly 
to be desired,' he continues, ' that every anomaly should be 
removed at which hostile critics can laugh or cavil ; still 
more that every person in the kingdom should have his just 
share, and no more than his just share, in the government of 
the country. On the other hand, it is of vital importance 
that the Legislature should not be deteriorated, or the safety 
of property endangered.' And though the writer admits, of 
course, that it might be theoretically possible to devise a 
system of representation in which all three objects should 
be exactly and regularly attained, yet ' most statesmen,' he 
argues, ' will hesitate before they prefer a paper constitution 
to the time-hardened trusty machine whose working they 
have thoroughly tried.' Then with a parting stroke at that 
school of reformers who refused to see anything in the pro- 
blem except a demand of the unenfranchised for enfran- 
chisement, he concludes with the following pregnant 
observations : 



REFORM BILL OF 1 859 27 

Political justice to one side, and not to the other, is worse than 
a set-off of injustice on both sides ; political symmetry on a faulty 
plan is worse than chaos. Better far to reconstruct the whole ; 
better still to let that which has worked well work on. But which- 
ever course is taken, the condition in the representative system 
which it is our duty to maintain, even at the cost of any restric- 
tion or any anomaly, is that the intellectual status of the Legis- 
lature shall not be lowered, and that sufficient weight, direct or 
indirect, shall be given to property to secure it from the possi- 
bility of harm. 

The new Conservative Government, partly, it is to be 
presumed, in deference to the largely factitious agitation out 
of doors, and partly from their perception of the fact that, as 
the Ministry of a minority, they were at the mercy at any 
moment of a coalition of the contending factions opposite, 
determined to take up the Reform question themselves; 
and, in February of the following year, Mr. Disraeli intro- 
duced a Bill. Lord Robert Cecil should have been flattered 
by the compliment which it paid to his opinions ; for, in 
truth, it might almost have been drafted by the author of 
the Oxford essay on the ' Theories of Parliamentary Reform. 
Or if the politician in him would have disclaimed responsi- 
bility for some of the provisions of the measure, the political 
thinker would have recognised the inspiration of his principles 
in all of them alike. DisraeH in 1 85 9 was as uncompromising 
an opponent of the ' Geographical,' or ' Symmetrical,' Re- 
former as his follower, and no less hostile than he to the crude 
doctrine that political power ought to be simply apportioned 
as per head of the population. At the same time, he was 
equally sensible with him of the anomaly created by the 
inequality between the borough and county representation, 
and no less conscious of the impossibility of framing any 
acceptable Reform Bill which did not deal with it. 



28 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Hence the measure introduced by him this year was the 
resultant of these forces. It proposed to leave the borough 
franchise untouched, but to reduce the fifty pound franchise 
of the counties to the level of the boroughs. Concurrently 
with this, however, and by way of makeweight for the popu- 
larisation of the suffrage in that branch of our elective 
system which had been supposed to give special representa- 
tion to property, a variety of new franchises, founded upon 
certain special qualifications, and designed to extend the 
political influence of the order of smal capitalists and of the 
professional and cultivated classes, were added to those 
already in existence. Thus, the possession of property to 
the extent of lo/. a year in the Funds, in Bank Stock, or in 
East India Stock, or of a sum of not less than 60/. lodged 
in a savings-bank, or of a pension amounting to 20/. a year 
and upwards in the Naval, Military, or Civil Service, was 
to qualify for a vote, as also was residence in a portion of 
a house whose aggregate rent was 20/. a year. And the 
franchise was further conferred upon graduates of the uni- 
versities, ministers of religion, members of the legal and 
medical professions, and certain schoolmasters. 

The weak points of such a measure as this, at any rate 
as it would present itself to the English mind, are too 
obvious to need indication. It was loyally defended from 
his place in the House by Lord Robert Cecil, but he 
must have doubted, one would think, whether its attempt 
to found an educational franchise — favourable as he was to 
the principle of such an endeavour — was happily conceived. 
Undoubtedly it excited more wonder than enthusiasm 
outside the House of Commons. People ridiculed it as 
fantastic, and pinned the expressive nickname of 'fancy 
franchises' to the new qualifications which it would introduce. 



REFORM BILL OF 1 859 39 

The great majority of the persons who constituted the 
selected classes being on the electoral roll already, Mr. 
Disraeli's proposals were not likely to find any very energetic 
advocacy in that quarter, or, indeed, among Conservatives 
in general ; while the maintenance of the borough qualifica- 
tion unreduced was, of course, sufficient to array the united 
forces of the Liberals and Radicals in opposition to the Bill 
— the latter because they really desired a popular extension 
of the suffrage, the former because they felt the party neces- 
sity of ' trumping their opponents' lead.' The Government 
were further unfortunate in having displeased two sections 
of their followers — represented respectively by Mr. Walpole 
and Mr. Henley, who resigned concurrently with the 
introduction of the Bill — on two distinct and even con- 
flicting grounds. Mr. Walpole strongly disapproved of the 
assimilation of the county and borough franchises ; Mr. 
Henley objected to drawing any hard and fast line of rental 
or rating qualification, and declaring that every man above 
it should have a vote, and no man below it, and prophesied, 
in a well -remembered phrase, that this must inevitably lead 
later on to ' an ugly rush ' to break through the barrier. 

Still, with all its defects, the Bill might have been made 
into a workable and satisfactory measure, and have postponed 
the final degradation of the franchise for another thirty or 
forty years. Nor is it easy to believe that, if party objects 
could have been excluded and party instincts suppressed, 
there would have been any difficulty in procuring a general 
Parliamentary agreement to remodel and pass the Bill. It 
had been brought in by a minority legislating, as it were, on 
sufferance, whose leaders, unless they meant to abandon 
their attempt as soon as commenced, were bound to, and 
did, in fact, signify their willingness to agree to its indefinite 



30 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

revision, if not, indeed, its complete reconstruction, in ac- 
cordance with the general sense of Parliament. What was 
wanting was simply the desire on the Opposition side of the 
House to co-operate with the Government. Had this desire 
been present and effective, the only real danger which the 
Bill would then have had to encounter would have been 
in the apathy with which, in Parliament as outside it, the 
prematurely named Reform 'movement' was regarded. 
There would in any case have been a strong effort made 
to shelve the whole question, and the attempt might 
possibly have prevailed. But, on the other hand, it is con- 
ceivable and not improbable that the leaders of the two 
parties loyally acting together might have succeeded in 
convincing the rank and file of their followers that now was 
the appointed time, and that not only the cause of Con- 
servatism, but that of orderly progress as distinguished from 
violent change, would gain by a readjustment of the electoral 
system in advance of the popular demand. 

As things stood, however, there was not, and never 
had been, any chance of the experiment being tried. 
The Reform Bill of 1859 was doomed from its birth, nay, 
predestined before its conception, to a place among the 
lost, though not so much from the ' eternal purpose and 
foreknowledge' of anyone as from the lack of both. Its 
rejection was the inevitable consequence of its presentment 
to a group of jealous and jarring political sections, led for 
this purpose, but this only, by the incarnation of Whig 
factiousness himself. The three or more parties who sat 
at that day on the left of the Speaker were united in nothing 
except their determination not to let the Tories get the 
credit of settling the only political question that promised 
to provide them with a chance of restoration to the offices 



CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT 3 1 

which they had been wranghng over, and intriguing them- 
selves into, and jockeying each other out of, for the last 
dozen years, and from which the incompetence of some, the 
untrustworthiness of others, and the dissensions of all seemed 
at last in danger of excluding the entire gang. 

Lord John Russell sounded a note of opposition to th^ 
Bill on the night of its introduction, and moved a hostile 
amendment to it on the second reading. A prolonged and 
interesting debate followed, in which it can hardly be said 
that the weight of argument was on the side of the Opposi- 
tion, and Ministers were defeated on a division by 330 votes 
to 291. Lord Derby on this advised an immediate disso- 
lution, and in the general election which followed, his party 
gained twenty-nine seats. They could still, however, be 
placed in a minority whenever their adversaries could bring 
themselves to combine ; and, as a matter of fact, their ad- 
versaries brought themselves to do so in the first week of 
the Session. Parliament met on May 31 ; an amendment 
to the Address in the usual form expressive of a withdrawal 
of Parliamentary confidence from the Government was 
moved by Lord Hartington on June 7 ; and three days later 
the Government were put in a minority of 13, in one of the 
largest divisions ever taken in the House of Commons. 

Ministers at once tendered their resignations, and after 
some curious negotiations, in which Lords Granville, 
Palmerston, and John Russell took part, and in which 
the third of these three statesmen is understood to have 
refused to serve under the first, though willing to accept 
office in a Government to be formed by the second, the crisis 
ended in the elevation of Lord Palmerston to the Premier- 
ship, which he held until his death six years afterwards. 
Liberty and Progress having thus been safeguarded by the 



32 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

restoration to power of their traditional patrons, it seems 
hardly worth recording, even as a mere matter of detail, that 
a Reform Bill, introduced by Lord John Russell in the year 
following, was shelved with exceeding unanimity and expe- 
dition, and that the entire question was suffered to remain 
from i860 to 1866 in absolutely unbroken repose. 



33 



CHAPTER IV 

The Whig feud healed — Lord John Russell's Reform Bill — Its neglect 
and withdrawal — Lord Robert Cecil in opposition — His militant 
attitude — The Paper Duties — Ministers and the ' attorneys ' — 
Succeeds to the title of Lord Cranborne— New Parliament and 
death of Lord Palmerston — Reform Bill of 1866 — Lord Cranborne 
on the working-man — And on the Bill — Defeat and resignation of 
the Russell Government. 

Between Lord Palmerston's last accession to office and 
his death there elapsed a period of six years, which though 
one of the least eventful, is from another point of view one 
of the most interesting in our Parliamentary history. Its 
interest, indeed, is mainly due to its very lack of incident, 
and to the signal illustration of the nature and working of 
the English party system which it thereby afforded. At the 
close of the last chapter a brief glance was cast at the 
abortive Reform Bill of i860. The briefest glance would 
be enough to devote to a measure which probably had not 
a single genuine admirer, and with the possible exception 
of its author, not even a friend, in the House of Commons. 
The state of Wordsworth's Lucy — the ' maid whom there 
was none to praise and very few to love ' — was exactly re- 
produced, in its peculiarity at least if not in its graciousness, 
by Lord John Russell's scheme. It is hard to say whether 
its introduction was an act of conventional homage to 
political consistency, or a ceremony performed to celebrate 

1) 



34 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

the happy pacification of a long-standing personal conflict. 
But perhaps the rite which solemnised Lord John's union 
with Lord Palmerston was more appropriately typified by 
the sacrifice of Lord Granville. Commanded by her 
Majesty, who was unwilling to decide between the con- 
flicting claims of the two veteran statesmen, to form a 
Government, Lord Granville succeeded only, as no doubt 
he was only expected both by his sovereign and himself to 
succeed, in showing what Government was capable of being 
formed by others. Lord Palmerston apparently was not un- 
unwilling — he did not at any rate positively refuse — to serve 
under him. Lord John Russell was and did. Lord 
Granville's mission was in fact as instantaneously enlighten- 
ing as the instructions given, together with a sword, by King 
Solomon to one of his attendants on a certain memorable 
occasion. It was at any rate made clear forthwith that 
Lord John Russell was not prepared to immolate his love 
of power on the altar of rivalry. Rather, to be sure, than 
yield precedence to Lord Granville, he would have remained 
out of office ; but rather than remain out of office, he would 
give place to Lord Palmerston. Thus all was amicably 
arranged. Lord Granville made a graceful bow and retired 
to the office of President of the Council ; Lord Palmerston 
became Prime Minister, and Lord John Russell Foreign 
Secretary ; and so, with the ancient Whig feud healed, 
and a consolidated Whig Government established firmly in 
power, it became once more possible for the thoughtful 
Whig politician to recognise that all was for the best in the 
best of all possible Whig worlds. 

The only thing which remained to be done was to pay 
the last tribute of decent respect to the pretext on which 
the new Government had driven their predecessors from 



THE SHAM REFORM BILL 3§ 

office, and of recognition of the services of the party leader 
who had led the attack, by allowing Lord John Russell to 
bring in a Reform Bill. Hence the introduction of a 
measure which was received with apathy, was debated with 
ever-increasing languor, and finally, after only narrowly 
escaping on more than one occasion the last indignity of a 
count-out, expired in derision. The truth, in fact, had to be 
at last acknowledged that there was no effective demand for 
reform in any quarter. The middle classes — that order of 
which Mr. Lowe was a few years later destined to become 
the eloquent champion— were naturally content with things 
as they were ; the working classes, in spite of the efforts of 
Mr. Bright and others to awaken their political ambitions, 
were largely indifferent to the whole subject ; and the 
personal popularity of the Premier, who was known to be 
no Reformer, did the rest. Thus it came about that from 
the end of the Parliamentary session of i860 till the end of 
the Parliament itself in 1865, the demand for the extension 
of the suffrage seemed to have completely died out, and 
that at the general election of the latter year, it was possible 
for the veteran Prime Minister, who had ridden into power 
over the corpse of a Franchise Bill, slain for its ' inadequacy,' 
to silence a Tiverton ' heckler ' with the jauntily audacious 
utterance, ' My friend there asks me why' we have not 
brought in another Reform Bill. My answer is, Because 
we are not geese ! ' 

Such periods of enforced inaction are usually borne with 
more composure by the commander of a political army 
than by the younger and more ardent of his lieutenants. 
The Tory party as a whole acquiesced with a mixture of 
philosophy and patriotism in the Palmerstonian regime. 
That is to say, they perceived as practical politicians the 

D2 



36 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

hopelessness of contending against the Prime Minister's 
popularity, and as good citizens they were conscious that 
the best interests of the country were served by his ascen-' 
dency. A Liberal Administration governing on Conservative 
principles is indeed the conscientious Tory's ideal, just as 
a Conservative Administration legislating to Liberal orders 
is — or should be — the object of his deepest aversion. The 
former arrangement represents the maximum of political 
stability attainable under a democratic suffrage and the 
party system ; the latter is calculated to aggravate the dangers 
of democracy and the vices of faction to their utmost. 

Those who can recall our political history during the last 
years of Lord Palmerston's life will not have forgotten the 
terms in which the situation used to be discussed in private 
by those moderate members of the two parties who ap- 
proached nearest to each other and therefore to the joint 
creation of a Centre group. They frankly and unreservedly 
agreed in recognising that Palmerston's rule secured the 
dominance of virtually Conservative principles while pro- 
tecting their official exponents against the factiousness of 
Liberal attack ; and if any Tory of that day was ever in a 
mood either to doubt or to resent the existence of such a 
state of things, a single glance at the malcontent yet im- 
potent band of resentful Radicals by which the veteran Minis- 
ter was surrounded, was always sufficient to convince him of, 
and to reconcile him with, the fact. 

Still the situation was naturally and necessarily irksome 
to a ' fighting ' member of the Opposition ; and one may be 
permitted perhaps to surmise that on not a few occasions 
in the years 1860-65, Lord Robert Cecil may have been no 
stranger to those feelings of impatience which twenty years 
later were to agitate the breast of a young follower of his 



A NEW 'RISING HOPE' 37 

own, and to find vent in the irregular campaigning operations 
of Lord Randolph Churchill. 

Anyhow we find the member for Stamford displaying 
every now and then during those years an eagerness for the 
fray which would have done no discredit in point of 
activity and vivacity to the member for Woodstock. Mr. 
Gladstone, then as now, not only combative himself, but the 
cause of combativeness in others, supplied him with chal- 
lenges not a few. On the Church rate question, and gene- 
rally on all matters in which the Anglican Establishment 
was concerned. Lord Robert Cecil had by a strange irony 
succeeded to the position occupied twenty years before by 
' the rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories.' It was 
to him and not to his leader, whose Churchmanship, though 
thoroughly orthodox in principle, was at all periods of his 
career distinctly opportunist in practice, that the High 
Anglican party in Parliament and outside it began to turn 
whenever any new legislation directly or indirectly affecting 
the Church of England was afoot. 

Nor was it in this alone that his vigorous Toryism dis- 
played itself. When in the year i860 the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer first proposed the repeal of the paper duties, 
Lord Robert Cecil was one of the few members who had 
the courage to resist that measure on any other than oppor- 
tunist grounds. There was indeed plenty of standing 
room from which to oppose it, without questioning the 
value of the popular ' boon ' which Mr. Gladstone was 
offering. The repeal of the paper duties — a measure for 
which Lord Palmerston cannot be suspected of any personal 
enthusiasm — was, according to the Conservative contention, 
the price paid to the Radical malcontents for continuing 
to the Government their sulky support. It could only be 



§8 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

effected by the addition of a penny to the income tax. 
Those who would lose by this fiscal readjustment were an 
ascertained class, and their immediate loss was indisputable j 
those who would immediately gain by it were, with the ex- 
ception of a few large traders and manufacturers, difficult 
to indicate, while the ultimate benefit to the community, if 
admitted to be certain of realisation, was uncertain in 
amount. It was accordingly on these grounds that the Con- 
ssrvatives as a body opposed the repeal of the paper duties, 
save when indeed they took up the still narrower ground 
that the project was financially inadmissible in the Budget 
of the current year. The abstract advantages of multiplying 
cheap literature were, if not exactly assumed by these ob- 
jectors, at any rate not as a rule openly contested by them. 
How much bolder was the line taken by the member for 
Stamford may be gathered from the following passage in a 
speech delivered by him on the Budget proposals for 1 860-6 1 . 
'Could it be maintained that a person of any education 
could learn anything worth knowing from a penny paper ? 
It might be said that people might learn what had been 
said in Parliament. Well, would that contribute to their 
education ? ' 

These two downright questions sufficiently define the 
views of the politician who propounded them. They must 
receive their answer from persons better qualified to consider 
them impartially than the present writer, who may, how- 
ever, be permitted to record his opinion that one of them 
still exacts, and perhaps more peremptorily than ever, a 
negative reply. ^ 

' Those of us who are moved to exult over what they may think a 
reproach to Lord Robert Cecil's political foresight in this matter, 
would do well to note that events, while refuting one of his implied 



THE PAPER DUTIES 39 

The position taken up by the Conservative majority in 
the House of Lords was less uncompromising than this. 
The Opposition peers contented themselves with maintaining 
that the state of the finances was not such as to justify the 
immediate abandonment of so large a head of revenue ; and 
somewhat to the surprise of the more timid order of Con- 
servatives, the Paper Duties Repeal Bill was rejected on the 
second reading. The cry, of course, was at once raised 
that this action was ' unconstitutional ' — a sort of perpetual 
adjective employed by some politicians to describe any 
action on the part of any person or power in the State 
which such politicians would have liked such person or 
power to refrain from. There was never much real question 
about the rights of the House of Lords in the case in ques- 
tion ; and such as there was was obligingly if undesignedly 
disposed of in favour of the Lords by their Radical assailants. 
Three propositions which may be affirmed with complete 
confidence emerge from the controversy : 

(i.) The House of Lords, although by its acts it may be 
taken to have tacitly acknowledged the sole right of the 
Commons to originate Bills of Supply, has never formally or 
expressly recognised any limitation of its own rights of 
dealing with them. 

(2.) The House of Lords has, by the practice of two 
centuries, acquiesced in the resolution of the Commons in 
1678 declaring that 'aids and supplies ought not to be 
changed or altered by the House of Lords,' and have never 
during that period so changed or altered them. 

judgments, have confirmed the other. For the increase in the number 
of things ' worth knowing ' which can be learnt from the penny papers, 
has been accompanied, as everybody is aware, by a more than pro- 
portionate abridgment of their Parliamentary reports. 



40 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

(3.) Their right to reject an aid or supply, in other 
words a Money Bill, without amendment has never been 
challenged by the Commons, and is implied in the fact that 
the assent of the Upper House is just as necessary to the 
validity of a Money Bill as of any other enactment. 

From these propositions it of course follows that the 
action of the Lords in rejecting the Paper Duties Bill was, 
putting its policy out of the question, every whit as consti- 
tutional as its rejection of the first Reform Bill. If anything 
unconstitutional is to be found in the entire transaction and 
the consequences thereon ensuing, it is to be sought rather 
in the three resolutions subsequently agreed to by the 
Commons on the motion of the Government. The first 
of these declared that * The right of granting aids and 
supplies to the Crown is in the Commons alone, as an 
essential part of their constitution ; and the limitation of 
all such grants as to the matter, manner, measure, and time 
is only in them.' The second was to the effect that ' although 
the Lords have exercised the power of rejecting Bills of 
several descriptions relating to taxation, by negativing the 
whole, yet the exercise of that power by them has not been 
frequent and is justly regarded by this House with peculiar 
jealousy as affecting the right of the Commons to grant the 
supplies and to provide the ways and means for the service 
of the year.' The third ran : ' That to guard for the future 
against the undue exercise of that power by the Lords, and 
to secure to the Commons their rightful control over tax- 
ation and supply, this House has in its own hands the 
power so to impose and remit taxes and to frame Bills of 
Supply that the right of the Commons as to matter, manner, 
measure, and time may be maintained inviolate.' 

Of these resolutions it may be observed that the first 



LORDS AND COMMONS - 4I- 

asserts what is not the fact ; that the second by implication 
contradicts it ; and that the third is unnecessary if the first 
is true, and either untrue or unconstitutional if it is not. 

This is clear if we examine the three resolutions in 
detail. Thus, it is not true that ' the right of granting aids 
and supplies to the Crown is in the Commons alone ; ' but 
only the right of proposing such grants, for they cannot be 
legally completed or take effect without the co-operation of 
the House of Lords. This, indeed, is implicitly admitted 
by the second resolution, which recognises the existence of 
a ' power ' in the House of Lords to reject Money Bills, and 
goes on to affirm, not that such rejection is unconstitutional 
— as it would be if ' the right of granting aids and supplies ' 
were ' in the Commons alone ' — but merely that it is of infre- 
quent occurrence and 'jealously regarded by the Lower 
House.' The third resolution would be superfluous if it were 
designed to guard against the ' undue exercise of a power ' 
that did not exist, while if intended to imply that any such 
. exercise of its constitutional privileges by the House of Lords 
as may be ' regarded with peculiar jealousy ' by the House 
of Commons becomes thereby an ' undue ' exercise of such 
privileges which the latter House ' has it in its power ' so to 
frame Money Bills as to prevent, it is clear that this resolu- 
tion embodies a proposition which is contrary either to fact 
or to constitutional principle. For except in the barren 
and limited sense in which an individual may say that he 
has ' power ' to disobey a law, or to violate a contract, or to 
refuse to be bound by an understanding, the embodied 
proposition is simply untrue. In any other than this sense it 
amounts to affirming that one House has ' the power ' under 
the constitution of limiting the constitutional power of the 
Other, which is a contradiction in terms and absurd. 



42 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

What, however, the resolution practically meant was not 
long after made clear. It meant that whether the Commons 
had or had not a constitutional power of preventing the 
Lords from rejecting a Money Bill, the Government intended 
to act as if they had. They intended in other words so to 
frame the most important of their Money Bills in the 
following year as that the power of the House of Lords to 
accept or reject it should be, not indeed in form, but in fact 
extinguished. After laying his financial statement before 
the House in the session of 1861, the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, acting in conformity with the principle asserted 
in the aforesaid third resolution, embodied all his Budget 
propositions, including resolutions for the repeal of the Paper 
Duties, in one Bill.^ Great exception was taken to this course 
by a section of the Opposition, of whom Lord Robert 
Cecil made himself an eloquent and powerful spokesman. 
He protested against the attack on the privileges of the 
House of Lords, in the name not only of the rights of that 
House but of the representative principle itself, which he 
stoutly declared to have as much at stake in upholding the 
free action of one branch of the Legislature as of the other. 
This view, which contains a truth not unworthy the attention 
even of the democrat of our own days, was effectively set 
forth in the following passages. 

It seems to me that the right hon. gentleman the member 

' It was no doubt natural and legitimate enough that Mr. Gladstone, 
as Chancellor of the Exchequer, should have been held chiefly re- 
sponsible for this high-handed proceeding. Still it is only fair to re- 
member (what, however, a recent critic seems to have forgotten) that 
the conciliatory and Conservative Prime Minister himself moved the 
resolutions of i860, and that if the third of them did not mean that 
Mr. Gladstone's financial tactics of 1861 were arranged and agreed to 
by his chief and his colleagues in the previous year, it meant nothing. 



' ATTORNEYS AND STATESMEN ' 43 

for Birmingham and others who take a strong view against the 
House of Lords wholly mistake the question of last year. They 
seem to imagine the question was one of jurisdiction, that the 
two Houses were fighting in the arena by themselves, and that 
there was no one else whose behests they ought to consider and 
obey. The Government seem to think it was a fight of procedure 
and forms, and precedent and parchment. We are accused of 
reaction on this side of the House. It is said we fancy we are 
living in past centuries, and that we are applying to the present 
the passions of the past. But in listening to the speech of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, we might be excused for thinking 
that we are still living and fighting in the days of the Stuarts. 
They do not see that behind, and acting through the House of 
Lords, there was the great educated public of the country, of 
which that House, and this House too, are merely the vehicles 
and instruments, and not seeing that they imagine that the fight 
will be settled by a conflict between the two Houses, and that 
they can fetter the action of the Lords by an imperious 
decree. 

The Government, however, were resolved to persevere 
with their ingenious device. On the adoption of the 
financial resolutions, they introduced a Budget Bill in 
which the proposed repeal of the paper duties was asso- 
ciated with various other readjustments of taxation ; but 
before reaching this stage of matters, the Government had 
evinced a disposition to press forward the preliminary 
proceedings in Committee of Ways and Means in a manner 
which provoked bitter rebuke from Lord Robert Cecil, who 
spoke of the devices by which the scheme had been 
characterised from beginning to end as ' more worthy of an 
attorney than of a statesman.' Referring to this phrase in a 
subsequent debate, he admitted that the expression was 
thought to be too violent, and that when a speaker, in 
the heat of debate, dropped an expression which, on 



44- THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY ' 

reflection, he felt to be stronger than was necessary, he 
ought to take the first opportunity either to apologise or to 
retract. ' Therefore ' he went on to say, in words still re- 
membered and quoted by his opponents, ' he felt that he 
was only doing justice to his own feelings when he owned 
that on that occasion he did a great injustice (cries of 
" hear, hear ") to the attorneys. They were a very honour- 
able set of men, and he was sure ' (he was evidently going 
on to say, amid the interruptions which ensued) * that they 
were incapable of the chicanery of which he had accused 
the Government.' 

This explanation shed no oil on the troubled waters, 
and adverse critics professed at the time, and still do 
profess, to detect in it a deliberate design of driving home 
the original sarcasm. If, however, they had remembered 
their 'Boswell,' they would have seen that it is at least 
patient of a more innocent interpretation. ' Do you know,' 
said Goldsmith, in the story told of him in the great 
biography, to Lord Shelburne, * that I never could conceive 
the reason why they call your lordship " Malagrida " ; for 
Malagrida was a very good sort of man.' ' This,' said Dr. 
Johnson, commenting on it years afterwards, ' was only a 
blunder in emphasis. It meant, " I wonder they should 
use Malagrida as a term of reproach." ' Now if the inventors 
of this nickname had subsequently apologised to the shade 
of that Italian Jesuit and visionary for having used his 
name as a term of reproach, they would have done mutatis 
mutandis exactly what Lord Robert Cecil did. Yet it 
would in such a case have been clearly perverse to accuse 
them of thereby intending a reiteration of their charges 
against Lord Shelburne. The modern instance indeed is the 
stronger of the two. For the attorneys were alive ; and it is 



A DISAPPOINTING APOLOGY 45^ 

surely not denied, even by the most hostile of the critics 
aforesaid, that they were in fact entitled to an apology. Well, 
they got it ; and the mere circumstance that certain other 
persons who were expecting an apology did not get it may 
have been a disappointment to them, but could not possibly 
constitute an additional grievance. Whether Lord Robert 
Cecil's sentence was designedly so framed as to arouse the 
expectations which he was about to disappoint, is no doubt 
an interesting and arguable question ; but it is one which 
no biographer can hope to answer. It remains and must 
remain between the speaker and his own conscience. 

One is not surprised to find, however, that Ministers 
and Ministerialists of the more solemn order were not a 
little scandalised at the sally ; and, indeed, that they were 
generally somewhat discomposed at the vivacity which the 
member for Stamford threw into his attacks on the 
Government. As usual in such cases they looked eagerly 
for some sign that the leader of the Opposition disapproved 
of his follower's ardour. But Mr. Disraeli was the last man 
from whom any such indication was to be expected. He 
had raised Ministerialist hopes by observing, on the occasion 
when the devices of the Government were denounced as 
more worthy of an attorney than a statesman, that 'the 
discussion appeared to be characterised by a great deal of 
unnecessary heat ; ' but when later on in the debate the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer took upon himself to ' invite 
the noble lord the member for Stamford, to reconsider the 
vocabulary in which he has addressed us,' Mr. Disraeli 
promptly interposed with a congratulation of his noble 
friend upon Mr. Gladstone's public acknowledgment of 
' the efficiency of his powers of expression. I confess,' he 
continued, ' that I have listened with satisfaction to the 



4^ THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

noble lord both last night and to-night, as it appeared td 
me that I never heard more constitutional opinions 
expressed in more effective language. I hope that on 
Thursday the noble lord the member for Stamford will be 
prepared to take that part in our debates in which I think he 
has greatly distinguished himself.' 

And in truth the noble lord the member for Stamford 
was just then prepared to take part in debate on any subject 
which appealed to his keenly critical intellect, or touched 
those Tory principles to which he held with such convic- 
tion, and for which he was always so ready to do battle. In 
some respects, indeed, the period of 1860-66 forms the 
most interesting stage in Lord Robert Cecil's career ; for in 
it one watches not only the gradual development of his 
great powers as a political thinker and reasoner, but the 
naturally more rapid process by which he perfected his 
brilliant aptitudes for parliamentary conflict. The states- 
man in his composition had still of course to reach 
maturity ; as, indeed, statecraft is an art in which a man 
may, and no doubt should, continue to be a learner to his 
life's end. But considered as a debater and political 
controversialist in general, the Lord Robert Cecil of the 
last Palmerstonian Parliament was to all intents and pur- 
poses the Lord Salisbury of to-day. His criticisms on 
Mr. Gladstone's ill-conceived and ill-conditioned attempt to 
introduce the principle of the taxation of charitable endow- 
ments ; his contribution to the debate on the motion of 
censure upon the Government for their dealings with the 
Danish Question ; and even such less important, but no 
less characteristic efforts as his speech on the long-forgotten 
Brazilian difficulty — when he accused Lord Russell of 
adopting 'a sort of tariff of insolence' in his correspon- 



BEldOMES LORD CRANBORNE 47 

dence with foreign Powers — show him in full mastery of 
those oratorical powers which he still so effectively 
wields. 

On June 14, 1865, Lord Robert Cecil succeeded, by the 
death of his elder brother, Lord Cranborne, to the second 
title of the family. On July 6, 1865, the Parliament of 
1859 was dissolved. Its life had been of a length which 
has seldom if ever been equalled since the passing of the 
Septennial Act, and which even in this instance only a 
special combination of circumstances — the popularity of the 
Conservative-Liberal Lord Palmerston, the discredit into 
which Lord Russell and the Reforming Liberals had 
fallen, and the general lassitude of parties which prevailed 
in consequence — would have enabled it to attain. 

Long, however, as the Parliament had lived — and it had 
now entered on the last year of its statutory term — it may be 
doubted whether from the Tory point of view its end did 
not come three months too soon. When the dissolution 
took place in the first week in July Lord Palmerston was 
living. His name was a name to conjure with, and the 
elections were held under its spell ; but he did not live 
to meet the new Parliament. On October 18 he died, 
and the Reform question was immediately thrust upon a 
Legislature, the Liberal element in which was largely 
Palmerstonian and as such disposed to look with coldness 
and misgiving on the policy of popularising the franchise. 
In such an assembly it was to be anticipated that a Reform 
Government would meet with the difficulties that in fact 
beset it ; that their attempts to settle the question would be 
thwarted and ultimately defeated by a mutinous section 
of their followers ; and that thereupon that hateful compe- 
tition of parties for popular favour at the expense of public 



48 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

interest which the country rues to this day, would, with all 
its disastrous consequence, set in. 

If a forward step is to be taken in the democratic direc- 
tion, it is not desirable that the attempt should be made 
either by a Liberal Government too numerically strong, or 
by one which internal discord renders too weak. The Ad- 
ministration that enters upon such an undertaking should 
be supported by a party united enough to enable it to carry 
a moderate measure, but should be at the same time held 
in check by an Opposition formidable enough to deter it 
from ' heroic ' schemes. 

This latter condition might or might not have been ful- 
filled in the Parliament of 1865 ; there was no opportunity of 
testing the question, for the non-fulfilment of the former 
condition became immediately apparent. No time was lost, 
on the part of the Moderate Liberals, in showing that a 
Russell-Gladstone Administration, with Reform as the prin- 
cipal item in the programme, was not to their taste. The 
Times, which in those days still retained its full prestige as 
the unerring exponent of middle-class Liberal sentiment, 
and to which in its then period of supremacy it was a far 
more important matter not to commit the capital journalistic 
blunder of pledging itself irrevocably to the losing side than 
it is to-day, made a ' dead set ' against the succession of 
Lord John (now Lord) Russell to the Premiership. 
' Leader ' after ' leader ' appeared in those usually reserved 
and prudent columns in deprecation of it ; and the 
editorial protest was emphasised by a scathing historical 
review of the many political errors and obliquities with 
which the name of Lord Russell had been associated. Her 
Majesty, if I remember rightly, was almost passionately en- 
treated to refrain from sending the naturally and universally 



. REFORM BILL OF 1 866 49 

expected summons to the veteran statesman, and to lay her 
commands for the reconstitution of the Liberal Government 
upon someone else. When the Times had burnt its last 
boat, it was officially announced that Lord Russell would 
be the new Prime Minister, and that Mr. Gladstone would 
succeed as Chancellor of the Exchequer to the leadership 
of the House of Commons. 

The Moderates, however, though defeated for the 
moment, had no idea of surrendering. The bulk of the 
party rallied, of course, to the reconstituted Ministry, and the 
' leading journal ' had to fall into line with the rest. But 
there was an able and powerful group of members on the 
Speaker's right — distinguished, several of them by their 
eloquence, and one of them by his almost lyrical enthusiasm 
for middle-class government — who had little belief in the 
wisdom and statesmanship of Mr. Gladstone, and none at 
all in the political virtue of Reform. And these men, fore- 
seeing, as of course they did, and indeed as the Speech from 
the Throne at the opening of the eventful session of 1866 
informed them, that the Reform question would now be 
raised in earnest, armed themselves for a conflict in which 
they were destined to win a Pyrrhic victory. 

. Yet it might have been thought, when Mr. Gladstone on 
March 12 introduced the Ministerial Bill for the extension 
of the franchise, that the Government would succeed in 
averting a conflict, at any rate within their own ranks. It 
was not a measure which need have greatly alarmed 
anyone who believed— as some at least of the recalcitrant 
Liberals professed to believe— in the prudence of any 
downward extension of the suffrage. It proposed a 7/. 
franchise in the towns, and a franchise of 14/. in the 
counties. Mr, Gladstone's calculation was that it would add 

E 



50 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

a total of 400,000 new voters to the electoral roll, 172,000 
by the county franchise, 204,000 by the borough rating 
franchise, and 24,000 by the lodger and savings-bank 
franchises. Lord Cranborne, who opposed the measure 
strenuously on the first reading, preferred the arithmetic 
of his own statistical contention that it would give the 
control of 168 boroughs, or a clear majority of the borough 
representation of England and Wales, to the working-classes. 
But he laid his finger upon a yet graver defect in the 
measure, though one which was curable and in fact cured 
before the final rejection of the Bill : namely, that it con- 
tained no scheme for the redistribution of seats, or in other 
words that it left Parliament uncertain what or whether any 
compensation would be provided by the Government for 
the swamping of the county constituencies with a large 
number of urban voters. 'The golden link,' said Lord 
Cranborne ironically, * which connects the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer's many phases of opinion and great varieties of 
character is his persistent undying hatred of the rural 
interest.' The counties, he pointed out, were, as matters 
stood, to a great extent unrepresented, and should have 
sixty or seventy members added to them to bring them up 
to the level of the borough representation as judged by 
the population standard. Yet the new Reform Bill, so far 
from doing anything to remedy this inferiority, would 
enormously aggravate it. 

The Liberal malcontents were not slow to seize upon 
this objection, and before the Bill came on for second 
reading. Lord Grosvenor gave notice of an amendment to 
the effect that the House was of opinion that it was inex- 
pedient to consider the Bill for the reduction of the fran- 
chise ' until it had before it the whole scheme of the Govern- 



BURNING THE BOATS 5 1 

ment for the amendment of the representation of the people.' 
It is not probable, one must in fairness admit, that the 
concession of this eminently reasonable demand would have 
disarmed the AduUamite opposition to the Bill. Later on, 
when party passions were more thoroughly aroused, and 
when the opponents of the Government had almost tasted 
blood in the narrow division on the above amendment, the 
concession was made ; but it was then of course too late. 
It might not have saved the Bill at any time, but the ob- 
stinate withholding of it was certainly an example of those 
unwisely high-handed tactics which have been not in- 
frequently, but seldom with the justification of success, 
adopted by Mr. Gladstone in the conduct or attempted 
conduct of the various legislative measures with which he 
has been concerned during his political career. 

The Easter recess intervened between this notice of 
amendment and the date fixed for the second reading ; 
and the Chancellor of the Exchequer took occasion during 
that interval to address a great public meeting at Liverpool 
and to denounce Lord Grosvenor and Lord Stanley, the 
intending seconder of the amendment, as ' coming forward 
combinedly for the purpose of defeating an act of grace, 
and what is likewise an act of justice to a great community 
of the country.' He went on to say that the Government 
staked their existence as a Government and their political cha- 
racter on the adoption of the Bill as it stood ; that the sound 
given forth by their trumpet had not been, and he trusted 
would not be, uncertain ; that they had passed the Rubicon ; 
that they had broken the bridges and burned the boats 
behind them ; that, in short, they were pledged, as deeply 
as this wealth of metaphors could pledge anyone, to stand 
or fall by their Bill. 



52 THE MARQUIS^ OF SALISBURY 

' All this, whether prudent or not, was legitimate enough ; 
but not so the charges against certain of his political oppo- 
nents with which Mr. Gladstone coupled it. He, in fact, re- 
peated before his Liverpool audience a memorable accusation 
which he had made against Lord Robert Montagu and 
others in a previous debate in the House of Commons, 
namely, that they seemed to dread the working men as * an 
invading and destroying army instead of their own flesh 
and blood ' — which, however, by the way, invading and de- 
stroying armies usually are. 

For this he was severely taken to task in the debate on 
the second reading of the Bill by Lord Cranborne, whose 
admirable definition of the only manly and self-respecting 
attitude to be adopted by a politician towards the working- 
class voter shall here be extracted entire. The member for 
Stamford recalled the incident of the former debate and of 
Mr, Gladstone's imputation, and after repudiating with just 
resentment the charge of having 'readily and earnestly 
accepted it,' he went on to deliver himself of the following 
spirited and eloquent protest against an attitude and mode 
of address which even at that day was much too commonly 
adopted towards the working classes, and which nowadays 
may be fairly described as the normal and habitual posture 
of a majority— drawn, it must be admitted, from both parties 
• — of English politicians : 

For myself I will venture to make my confession of faith on 
the subject of the working classes. I feel that there are two 
tendencies to avoid. I have heard much on the subject of the 
working classes in this House which I confess has filled me with 
feelings of some apprehension. It is the belief of many hon. 
gentlemen opposite that the working classes are to be our 
future sovereign, that they are to be the great power in the 
State, against which no other power will be able to stand ; and 



FLATTERERS OF THE COMING KING $3 

it is with feelings of no small horror and disgust that I have 
heard from many hon. gentlemen phrases which sound, I hope 
unduly, like adulation of the sovereign they expect to reign over 
them. Now if there is one claim which the House of Commons 
has on the respect of the people of the country, it is the great 
historic fame it enjoys ; if it has done anything to establish the 
present balance of power among all classes of the community, 
and prevent any single element in the Constitution from over- 
powering all the rest, it is that in presence of all powers, however 
great and terrible they may have been, the House of Commons 
has always been free and independent in its language. It never 
in past times, when kings were powerful, fawned upon them. It 
has always resisted their unjust pretensions ; it always refused 
to allow any courtierly instincts to suppress in it that solicitude 
for the freedom of the people of the country which it was insti- 
tuted to cherish. I should deeply regret, if at a time when it 
is said we are practically about to change our sovereign, and 
when some may think that new powers are about to rule over 
the country, a different spirit were to influence and inspire the 
House of Commons. Nothing could be more dangerous to the 
reputation of the House, nothing more fatal to its authority, than 
that it should be suspected of sycophancy to any power, either 
from above or below, that is likely to become predominant in 
the State. 

Proceeding to the merits of the Bill and the amendment, 
Lord Cranborne dwelt, as other speakers had done before 
him, with much force upon the inconvenience and unfair- 
ness to the House of the course which the Government had 
insisted on pursuing. At the same time, and with equally 
telling effect, he pointed out that their outward show of 
imperiousness hid much inward hesitation, and went on to 
recount the history of their successive retreats from the 
various positions they had taken up. They began, he said, 
by 'holding very cavalier language on the Franchise Bill. 
They at first did not in the least care to deal with the 
redistribution of seats. It is true the right honourable 



54 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not ab- 
solutely say so, but he used language which bore no other 
interpretation than that he intended to bring in the Seats 
Bill next year. Well, the right hon. gentleman was driven 
from that position, and then he said the Seats Bill was to 
be brought in this year, but only formally. But then the 
right hon. gentleman again gave way, and stated that the 
Bill should be made a matter of standing or falling by the 
Government. And now we are told that a yet further step 
is to be made, and that the Seats Bill is to be pressed pari 
passu with the Franchise Bill, in order to satisfy the scruples 
of some of the supporters of the Government.' 

Even this, however, as Lord Cranborne went on to show, 
would not be sufficient security for the House, whose desire 
it was ' not that the Seats Bill and the Franchise Bill should 
Yixoceed pari passu, that is to say, one after the other,' but 
that they should proceed together, that is, in one and the 
same Bill. ' We wish, indeed, for information ; but informa- 
tion is not our main object. What we wish for most is 
control. It is a small matter to be told what the Govern- 
ment will do, for the Government is not all-powerful ; what 
we wish is that the form of the Bill shall be such that from 
the first to the last the House of Commons shall enjoy an 
undisputed and undiminished control over both branches 
of the subject.' 

The attack was gratuitously invited ; and although no 
doubt the Ministerial measure would have been assailed on 
some other ground if it had contained full particulars of 
the redistribution scheme of the Government, and though 
it is pretty certain that on some ground or other it would 
have been defeated, it is not good generalship to make the 
enemy's work easier for him than it need be, even though 



' MINISTERIAL BLUNDERS 55 

his ultimate victory be inevitable. Again, it is always 
obviously wrong to 'put your foot down,' or to make as 
though you would do so, unless you can keep it down. 
Ministers must have known that they could never make 
a signicm stantis vel cade?itis Camarillce out of the doctrine 
that an Administration may call upon a Legislature to pass 
a Franchise Bill with its eyes shut and without a fact or 
a figure to show how the general distribution of political 
power among the various classes and local communities 
throughout the United Kingdom would be affected by it. 
That would have been too monstrous a pretension. Full 
particulars on the point would have, they well knew, to be 
communicated by them to Parliament long before the final 
stages of the Franchise Bill received or could receive Parlia- 
mentary approval ; and any such paltering with the House 
of Commons in the matter as might seem to indicate a 
desire to limit or hamper a Parliamentary control unwillingly 
submitted to, ought by all means to have been avoided. 

It gave excuse to hostile critics like Lord Cranborne to 
treat the secrecy in which that part of the Ministerial policy 
had been shrouded as something highly suspicious; and when 
by a superfluity of maladroitness an important member of 
the Government proceeded to justify a policy of concealment 
in the language of defiance, the hands of opponents were of 
course still further strengthened. When Lord Cranborne 
declared that he was not prepared to follow a guide who 
' said he was going into an unexplored region, but declined 
to state what he knew of its nature and its inhabitants, and 
would give no other information than that he had burnt his 
boats and broken down the bridges,' it is the wit of the 
remark which first strikes us ; but there is a weight of 
solid sense and justice behind it which sends home the barb; 



56 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Lord Grosvenor's amendment was rejected only by the 
narrow majority of five, and it, of course, became evident 
that the Government would have to give way on the point 
at issue. Some hostile criticism was, indeed, levelled at 
them for not resigning after a victory almost as discreditable 
as a defeat. It was said that the ' stand or fall ' declaration 
of the speech at Liverpool bound Ministers to resignation 
in such a case as had arisen ; but Mr. Gladstone denied that 
he had ever pledged the Government not to accept any 
alteration in the Bill, or (it was necessary to his argument 
that he should have added) in their Parliamentary tactics with 
respect to it. As long as the Bill stood, the Government 
stood, and the Bill had not yet fallen. Meanwhile, Minis- 
ters would bow to the decision of the House, and introduce 
the Redistribution Bill at once. 

On May 7, this measure was introduced. It was severely 
criticised, the Conservatives attacking, in particular, the pro^ 
posed destruction of the small boroughs, and the grouping 
together of certain other constituencies. Mr. Disraeli, in 
fact, advised the Government to withdraw the Bill, and to 
introduce it the next Session, with a backing of more care- 
fully prepared electoral statistics of the borough and county 
franchise. This Ministers, of course, refused to do, and the 
measure was prosecuted to its historic result in their defeat 
on June 18 by a majority of eleven, on an amendment 
moved by Lord Dunkellin, then member for Gal way, an 
event which led to the abandonment of the Bill and the 
resignation of the Government. 

This ' Waterloo ' of Lord Russell's or Mr. Gladstone's — 
whichever claims to be its Napoleon — was, in some respects, 
a singular catastrophe, and greatly divided opinion then 
and afterwards. There is no doubt that the instinct which 



RATING AND RENTAL- ' ST 

impelled her Majesty to refuse the resignation of her 
Ministers at its first offer, and to direct them to reconsider 
its propriety, was shared by a very considerable body of her 
subjects. Many people were and continued unable to see 
that the proposed substitution of rateable for rental value as 
the basis of the franchise, could possibly be a vital point — the 
more so as the amendment carried against the Government 
was quite general in its terms, and did not commit them to 
any hard and fast line of rateable qualification. Ministers, 
it was argued, merely wished to extend the suffrage to a 
certain number of unenfranchised citizens, and to do this, 
they proposed to give votes to all householders sitting at a 
7/. rental. If Parliament, however, preferred to go by the 
rate-book, why, in the name of common sense, could not the 
Government defer to their wishes, ascertain what rating 
qualification — 6/., 5/., or what not — would enfranchise as 
many persons as would get votesvtinder a 7/. rental, and 
remodel their Bill accordingly ? 

It was shown by Mr. Gladstone in his subsequent state- 
ment in the House of Commons that this operation would 
have been no easy one. In some boroughs, the rateable 
value equivalent to a 7/. rental for enfranchising purposes 
would have been 6/., in others 4/., and in others lower still. 
Nevertheless, it would no doubt have been possible to fix an 
average rateable value which, taking the whole electorate 
throughout, would have represented an extension of the 
suffrage equal to that contemplated by the Government in 
their original Bill. Hence it may be doubted whether this 
portion of the Ministerial explanation really went, or was 
intended to go, to the root of the matter. It is the latter part 
of Mr. Gladstone's statement which contained its real gist and 
significance, and no one, be he Tory or Liberal, can, in my 



53 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

judgment, read that portion of it at this distance of time, 
without feeling that the resignation of the Government was 
amply justified. 

On April 27, Mr. Gladstone reminded the House, Lord 
Grosvenor had come within half a dozen votes of defeating 
the Government on the question of producing the Seats Bill 
before inviting the decision of Parliament on the principle of 
the Franchise Bill. On May 2, Sir Rainald Knightley car- 
ried against them, by a majority of ten, and despite their 
earnest protests, an instruction to the Committee to include 
in the Bill clauses dealing with bribery and corruption. 
On June 4, another motion was made, which ended without 
a division, but which was debated for three nights, and which 
evidently must have had, and was intended to have, the 
effect of putting aside the consideration of the Bill for the 
year. On June 7, Lord Stanley, without notice, moved to 
postpone the enfranchisement clauses to the redistribution 
clauses, and mustered no fewer than 260 against 287 votes 
in favour of his proposal. Then Mr. Walpole moved to 
raise the county franchise from 14/. to 20/., and was beaten 
only by fourteen votes. And lastly, and immediately before 
Lord Dunkellin's successful motion to substitute a rating for 
a rental qualification in the boroughs, a similar amendment 
had been moved with respect to the county franchise, and 
rejected only by a minority of seven. 

Surely this catalogue of rebuffs, either actually sustained 
or barely averted, told its own tale, and that a tale which 
no Administration with a particle of self-respect could pos- 
sibly mistake. It is, in fact, idle to affect doubt as to the 
general attitude of parties outside the mere disciplined rank 
and file of the Ministerialists towards the Bill. They did not 
mean it to pass ; and nothing that its authors would of 



MIDDLE CLASS RULE 59. 

could have done to meet their professed objections would 
have disarmed their real hostility to it. It has been already 
admitted that the Government went out of their way to make 
the work of their opponents unduly easy for them ; let it be 
again admitted that that work would in any case have been 
done. The so-called Adullamites of that day — the seceders 
from the Ministerial ranks on this question — did not want 
any Parliamentary Reform at all. Few among them, per- 
haps, were quite such passionate admirers of middle-class 
government as Mr. Lowe ; but substantially they agreed with 
him on that point. They held, at any rate, that the regime 
set up in 1832 had worked well, that the country had ad- 
vanced under it in prosperity and strength, and that there 
was no justification for overthrowing it in order to try a vast 
and doubtful democratic experiment in its stead. And there 
is a good deal to be said to-day for their contention. It 
is at least true that middle-class government — bourgeois 
government, if we like to call it so — had an unfairly short 
trial in this country. The aristocratic oligarchy which pre- 
ceded it played a glorious part in the making and the 
defence of our empire, but it was allowed 140 years from 
the Revolution to the Reform Act to do its work in. Five- 
and-thirty was the whole period granted to its successor. 

The Adullamite Whigs wished to give it a longer trial 
from a genuine confidence in it, and as regards some of 
them, a positive admiration for it. Tories naturally wished 
to extend its lease of power on their general principle of 
disinclination to risk going further and faring worse ; and 
between these two opposing parties the Reform Bill of 1866 
was doomed. Lord Cranborne, as has been seen, exerted 
himself with energy, and doubtless with the heartiest good- 
will, to defeat it. Better had he helped it to pass, as I dare 



66 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

say he has thought many times since ; but there is no reason 
why such regret as he may feel should have any admixture 
of self-reproach. Superhuman, indeed, would have been the 
foresight to which the amazing event of 1867 had revealed 
itself in 1866. Small blame to Lord Cranborne, or any 
other sincere Conservative, not to have guessed to what 
lengths the leaders of his party were capable of going. As 
well might one reproach a garrison, betrayed by their officers 
into an unconditional and ignominious surrender, with 
having rejected a previous offer of permission to evacuate 
the fortress with all the honours of war. One may regret, for 
the sake alike of their cause and of its defenders, that the 
offer was not accepted ; but it would indeed be hard to 
condemn those who rejected it. Soldiers can hardly be ex- 
pected to ' transact ' with the enemy on the footing of an 
assumption that if they do not agree with him quickly, their 
commanders may lead them over, bag and baggage, into his 
camp. 



6r 



CHAPTER V 

Enters Lord Derby's Cabinet as Secretary for India — The casuistry of 
the Great Surrender — Lord Derby's and Mr. Disraeli's respective 
shares in it — The Reform resolutions — Resignations of Lords 
Cranborne and Carnarvon and General Peel — The confessions of Sir 
John Pakington — ' Ten Minutes Bill ' — Household suffrage with 
checks — Their disappearance — Votes and speeches of Lord Cran- 
borne — Final protest — The Bill becomes law. 

Having regard to the composition of the House of 
Commons, and to the nature of the events which had 
brought about the downfall of Lord Russell's Adminis- 
tration, it was to be expected that his successor wou'd 
endeavour to strengthen the Government which her 
Majesty had commanded him to form by the enlistment of 
recruits from the opposite party. The Liberals still pos- 
sessed a large nominal majority in the House of Commons, 
and Lord Derby was of course well aware that he could 
only maintain himself in office on one of two conditions. 
Either he must definitively detach from the Liberal party its 
Adullamite section, and by the admittance of some member 
of it into a Coalition Cabinet, purchase its consistent and 
united support in Parliament, or he would have to content 
himself with a tenure of power at the mere will and pleasure 
of these malcontents, who might at any moment, or for 
any whim, renew their allegiance to the leaders whom they 
had abandoned. Naturally, he would have preferred the 



02 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

former alternative, and overtures were made by him to Mr. 
Lowe and others with the view of inducing them to join his 
Administration. Had they consented, the whole course of 
political history might, and in all probability would, have been 
changed ; for a representation of the AduUamite group in Lord 
Derby's Cabinet would have so strengthened the hands of 
Lord Cranborne and the other dissentients from the principle 
of household suffrage as to have rendered it a moral impossi' 
biUty for that historic ' leap in the dark ' to be taken. 

Lord Derby's proposals were, however, declined, and he 
was compelled to form a purely Conservative Cabinet, in 
which Lord Cranborne was offered, and accepted, the post 
of Secretary of State for India. It was high preferment for 
a politician who had not undergone the usual preparation 
for Cabinet office by service in a subordinate ministerial post ; 
but so brilliant was the reputation which his parliamentary 
abilities had won for him, that it surprised few and dis- 
satisfied none. Such indications of administrative capacity 
as success in the House of Commons affords are too 
often illusory ; but in this instance they were amply justified. 
The new Secretary for India had been hardly a fortnight in 
office, and had had to spend part even of that brief period 
in seeking and obtaining re-election by his constituents of 
Stamford, when it fell to his lot to introduce the Indian 
Budget of the year, and the remarkable mastery of this 
intricate subject which was displayed in his speech on that 
occasion surprised many, even of those who imagined that 
they had taken the full measure of his abilities. 

In his speech to his constituents on July 12, 1866, he 
referred to the fall of the late Government, which he attri- 
buted, as from the point of view of the parliamentary strategist 
he fairly might attribute it, to the concealment practised by 



THE GREAT BETRAYAL 6^ 

the Government with respect to their Reform poKcy ; and 
he went on to promise that the Conversative party would 
treat the question in a more open and confidential spirit. 
Within less than a fortnight after these words were uttered, 
there occurred that singular outbreak of popular ' horseplay ' 
—for it was really nothing else — which a combination of 
administrative weakness at the Home Office, with ill-judged 
tactical dispositions in Scotland Yard, had, if not precipitated, 
at least rendered possible, and which has gone down to 
history under the far too portentous title of ' The Hyde 
Park Riots.' That the incident materially affected the 
counsels of the Government in the sense of influencing the 
direction and determining the magnitude of their Reform 
Bill it might be too much to say ; but one can hardly doubt 
that, like all other such noisy demonstrations, it succeeded 
in persuading Ministers that more people cared about Re- 
form than they had suspected, and that the recess must 
be devoted, as in fact it was, to maturing their legislative 
plans on the subject. 

There is probably no event in the entire political history 
of our country which has provoked, and will always continue 
to provoke, such keen controversy as the introduction and 
passing of the Second Reform Act by Mr. Disraeli and the 
Administration and party which assisted him to carry it. 
The gran rifiuto of 1846, which is sometimes classed 
with the volte-face of 1867, cannot, as a matter of fact, com- 
pare with it for wealth of controversial issues. It does not, 
I think, even raise such difficult and disputable questions 
as to the personal character, conduct, and motives of the 
statesmen who played the principal part in it, while in point 
of strictly political casuistry, the difference between the 
later and the earlier incident is the difference between 



64 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

complexity of the most formidable character and simplicity 
itself. Indeed, it is the casuistic intricacy of the situation 
in 1867 which makes it so much harder to pronounce an 
off-hand verdict on the conduct of the chief actors. 

Substantially there were and are but two issues to be 
determined with respect to Peel's policy in 1846. Was it 
politically right to substitute Free Trade for Protection? 
Was Peel the right man to effect the substitution ? And 
although other questions may arise ancillary to the deter- 
mination of this latter issue— such, for instance, as whether 
Peel's conversion was genuine, at what date it occurred, 
and whether he was justified, even as a genuine if an 
eleventh-hour convert, in carrying the very measure which 
he and his party were sent to Parliament to oppose — yet 
still that one great and knotty question of political casuistry 
which is most prominent, which is, in fact, the question of 
questions, in Lord Derby's case, does not arise at all in 
Peel's. It may be stated in the one sentence : What con- 
cessions is it lawful and zvise for a statesman to make to the 
f>olitical principles of his adversaries in the interests of his 
own creed 1 When Sir Robert Peel abolished the Corn 
Laws, he had, ipso facto ondi avowedly, to lay aside the creed 
of the Protectionist. When Mr. Disraeli introduced house- 
hold suffrage, he not only did not avowedly abandon the 
principles of Conservatism, but he professed to be taking 
the course by which, in the peculiar circumstances of the 
situation, those principles would best be promoted, or perhaps 
could alone be defended. 

There lies the difference between the two cases. It 
goes deep down. It unquestionably furnishes Lord Derby 
and Mr. Disraeli with a far better theoretical defence of 
their policy than Peel was ever able to plead for his ; but 



THE GREAT BETRAYAL - 65 

at the same time it opens out a wide field for controversy 
upon the question whether actual facts and probabilities can 
be brought within its protection. With Peel, it is possible 
— at least for a strict doctor of poHtical ethics — to adopt 
a * short method.' The power which he received from the 
Conservative electors was given him expressly to defend 
Protection. He used it to establish Free Trade. Politically, 
that may have been wise, patriotic, self-sacrificing, what 
you will ; personally, it was immoral and dishonourable. 

No such charge as this could have been justly brought, 
against the authors of the Reform Act of 1867. They 
had received no specific mandate from the Conserva- 
tive electorate to resist any reduction of the franchise, or 
even to insist that reduction should not go beyond a speci- 
fied point. The only mandate given to them was the general 
commission that every Conservative Administration receives 
at all times from every Conservative electorate — the commis- 
sion to maintain the Constitution, to uphold the great social 
interests which are founded on property and contract, and 
to withstand such legislative proposals, and such only, as 
may threaten those interests or that Constitution with im- 
mediate or prospective damage. Nor can it, I think, be 
reasonably disputed that the Government which succeeded 
to power in 1866 were clothed with full moral authority, 
to make, in the name and on the behalf of the Con- 
servative party throughout the country, such terms with 
Democracy as might to them, the negotiators, seem best 
calculated to avert or mitigate, or if neither of these opera- 
tions were in their judgment possible, to postpone, any 
dangers with which, from the point of view of. Conserva- 
tism, our institutions might be threatened. 

If this be the correct view of the situation in 1867, it is 

F 



66 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

clear that the latitude of legislative action which might 
fairly be claimed by the new Administration was very 
extensive ; and that, startling as was the concession which 
they in fact made to the Radical Reformers, it would, on 
one condition, admit of being validly defended. Given, that 
is to say, a bona fide belief on the part of the authors of the 
Reform Act of 1867 that the Constitution would incur less 
immediate danger, that the great national interests de- 
pendent on the maintenance of public honesty and respect 
for private rights would be, in the long run, better safe- 
guarded by boldly and at once enfranchising the urban 
householder than by taking any one of the other courses 
open to them, why then, no doubt that Act might be 
practically and substantially justified, as we know, of 
course, that it has since been again and again theoretically 
and formally justified — by Conservative apologists on genu- 
inely Conservative grounds. 

But did any such (5<7;Z(^yf^<? belief exist in the Ministerial 
mind ? Did it exist, I mean, in any shape worthy to be 
called a belief? Did it exist as a reasoned conviction so 
far as it applied to contemporary facts, and as a reasonably 
grounded calculation so far as it concerned the future? 
Or was it merely a hit-or-miss speculation, an expedient 
desperately adopted by a Government acting under the 
conjoint influences of an honest if not very heroic anxiety 
to buy off a popular agitation, and a determined if not 
particularly patriotic resolve to score a point, at all hazards, 
against their political adversaries ? 

Fortunately — or unfortunately — the answer to these ques- 
tions is not entirely a matter of conjecture. We know what 
was thought of the Reform Act of 1867 by the head of the 
Administration that passed it ; for on two separate occasions, 



LORD derby's share 6/ 

and in two memorable phrases, he opened his mind upon 
the subject : and though it was long the fashion to believe 
that the head of the Administration that passed the Act was 
not the ' head ' that planned it, that belief has of late been 
considerably shaken. That ' cast ' of the characters in the 
drama which assigned the part of Mephistopheles to Mr. 
Disraeli and of Faust to Lord Derby was picturesquely 
conceived ; but there was never any historic warrant for it, 
and whatever later evidence has come out is opposed to it. 
It has been affirmed in more than one authoritative quarter 
that Lord Derby and not Mr. Disraeli was the real father of 
household suffrage, and the positive statements of third 
parties to this effect are supported by antecedent prob- 
abilities. It must never be forgotten that the Prime 
Minister's early training and associations were those of a 
Parliamentary Reformer ; that prudence was not among 
his prominent qualities as a statesman, nor punctilious 
scruple, it must be added, his distinctive characteristic as 
a parliamentary tactician ; and that in his capacity as 
leader of the party, his credit was far more deeply engaged 
in winning the party battle than was that of his lieutenant. 
Moreover, there has been too little notice taken of the 
various significant admissions let fall by him here and there 
in his speeches in the House of Lords with reference to the 
history of Ministerial counsels on the Reform question. 
It is impossible to study these utterances, considered as 
indications of the date at which he formed his conviction 
as to the necessity of introducing an extensive measure 
of Reform, and took the necessary steps to bring this con- 
viction before his principal colleague, without arriving on 
one's own part at the conclusion that Lord Derby's responsi- 

F 2 



68 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

bility for the great change was, in fact as well as in theory, 
paramount. 

But of course the strongest evidence for this is to be 
found in his subsequent utterances. In public he admitted 
that the passing of the Act was a ' leap in the dark,' and in 
private he commended it because it ' dished the Whigs.' 
Lord Derby was a considerable orator in his day, but one 
may safely affirm that no other utterance of his will live, or 
deserves to live, as long as these two remarkable sayings. 
That they revealed the inmost thoughts of the man who 
uttered them it is impossible to doubt ; his whole character 
and record, and his well-known views (substantially identical 
with those of Mrs. Battle as a whist-player) on the game at 
which he was so experienced and so expert a hand, go 
bail for their sincerity. That they gave expression to the 
secret sentiments of every ' fighting ' member of his party, 
or in other words of that large majority who in every party 
' play to win,' is equally certain. And the only remaining 
question is whether the leader of the Conservative party in 
the House of Commons advised the enfranchisement of the 
householder in any other spirit than that in which his chief 
proposed and his followers accepted it. 

In a phrase which will go down to posterity along with 
the ' leap in the dark ' and the ' dishing of the Whigs,' 
Mr. Disraeli boasted that he ' had had to educate his party.' 
What was the ' true inwardness ' of his teaching ? Did he 
himself hold, and did he endeavour to instil into them the 
belief, that the wholesale democratisation of the franchise 
was, despite all appearances, in reality a Conservative 
measure ? Or did he merely strive to impress them with 
the necessity of practically recognising the force of the 
aphorism that ' needs must when the devil drives ? ' Did 



MR. DISRAELI'S SHARE 6q 

he, in other words, persuade the party to accept household 
suffrage because he, too, was bent upon dishing the Whigs, 
and found that they could not be dished on any less exor- 
bitant terms, or because he really held the Hyperborean 
theory so happily satirised by the Mr. Lowe of that day — 
because he really believed in the existence of a zone of 
a warmer temperature ' at the back of the north wind,' and 
had genuinely convinced himself that by penetrating beneath 
the layer of Radicalism in the lower middle class, he would 
reach among the workmen a Conservative stratum of the 
population ? 

This, I am well aware, is the theory which finds favour 
with Conservatism of the Primrose League variety. Nor do 
I doubt that it contains an element of truth. It is easy to 
believe that an experiment in democratic legislation, which 
might seem hazardous enough to a statesman of inherited 
Conservative instincts and traditions, would have fewer 
terrors for the author of Coningsby and Sybil. But it is one 
thing to admit that certain vague and romantic aspirations of 
youth may possibly have survived in the breast of a middle- 
aged statesman, and quite another thing to believe that they 
had ripened in that soil into settled and confirmed con- 
victions. It may be true that Disraeli ' shot Niagara ' with 
more of hope and less of fear than did his fellow- voyagers, 
but that he went over the fall deliberately, and in the con- 
fident expectation of arriving safely at the bottom, and find- 
ing himself in quiet waters when he got there, is no better, 
in my humble judgment, than a pious legend. I believe, 
and I think the whole course of his Parliamentary tactics 
shows, that he would not have shot Niagara at all if he 
could have gained his object in any other w-ay ; and I 
beHeve further that that object was substantially the same 



70 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

for him as for his chief and his colleagues : that is to say, 
that his motive, like theirs, was compounded of the dis- 
interested and patriotic anxiety to settle the question 
which was disturbing the peace of the country, and the, in 
a party sense, interested desire to prevent the honour and 
glory of effecting that settlement from falling into the hands 
of political adversaries. In what proportions these two 
motives were originally distributed, it would be hard to 
determine, and indeed of little profit to inquire; for it is 
unfortunately of the nature of the last-mentioned motive 
to play the part of Aaron's rod, in periods of vehement 
party contention, to every other ; and there is little doubt 
that as the battle grew fiercer, the restraints of prudence, and 
patriotism were swept away like dykes before a flood by the 
torrential desire for victory at any cost. 

Rumours of dissension in the Cabinet had been rife 
during the autumn and winter of 1866. It was profoundly 
uncertain whether Ministers would be able to agree upon 
any scheme of Parliamentary Reform, and it was even 
doubted by some whether enough unanimity would be found 
among them to admit even of the attempt being made. 
Nevertheless, Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues met Parliament 
on February 5, 1867, with an unbroken front, and the 
Queen's Speech announced that ' attention would again be 
called to the state of the representation of the people in 
Parliament.' The paragraph containing this announcement 
was made to conclude with the expression of her Majesty's 
trust that the deliberations of Parliament ' conducted in a 
spirit of moderation and mutual forbearance, may lead to 
the adoption of measures which, without unduly disturbing 
the balance of political power, shall freely extend the elec- 
toral franchise.' This somewhat unusual reference to 



A GENEROUS INVITATION 7I 

' moderation and mutual forbearance ' was soon to receive an 
authoritative interpretation. What it meant, as the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer announced six days later, was that 
the Government proposed to attempt the settlement of the 
Reform question by a new process, and on the principle of 
* co-operation ' instead of that of ' competition.' 

On February 11, Mr. Disraeli thus interpreted it in an 
elaborate speech, in which he fully reviewed the history of 
Parliamentary Reform, and invited the House to restore the 
question to the position which, as he contended, it had ori- 
ginally occupied in that House, and from which it had only 
been displaced by the action of private members, notably of 
Lord John Russell in his intervals of private membership 
and official eclipse — the position, that is to say, not of a party 
question, but of a ' House of Commons question.' In short, 
the meaning which Ministers attributed to the ' moderation 
and mutual forbearance ' phrase in the Speech from the 
Throne was that 'under the circumstances in which the 
House found itself,' it was, in their opinion, 'expedient 
that Parliamentary Reform should no longer be a question 
which should decide the fate of Ministries. 

Excellent advice ! Nothing was wanting to its value but 
that it should have been given and followed five-and-thirty 
years before, and on half a dozen occasions since. Ad- 
dressed as it was now by the leader of a party which had a few 
months before assisted to dislodge its opponents from power 
to the opponents whom it had dislodged — and nominally on 
the great question whether rating or rental should be the 
basis of the electoral franchise — it is not surprising that it 
should have been received with some laughter on the Oppo- 
sition side of the House. It struck the Liberals, no doubt, 
as a remarkable illustration of that yearning after the noble 



•Jl THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

ideal of a polity, where ' none were for a party, but all were 
for the State,' which is usually found to glow so much more 
warmly in the breasts of the ' Ins ' than in those of the 
« Outs.' 

To assist Parliament to realise it, Mr. Disraeli proposed 
to proceed by way of resolution. Not that it was to be sup- 
posed, he was careful to add, that Ministers were asking the 
House to go into Committee, and allow them to propose 
resolutions, because they were ' angling for a policy.' They 
were doing nothing of the kind. They had ' distinct princi- 
ples which would guide them, and which they would ask the 
House to sanction. But ' — for there must always be a ' but ' 
when a Government, with distinct principles to guide them, 
do not see their way to embodying these principles after the 
more usual fashion in a Bill — they would, ' in the application 
of these principles, consult in every way the sense and 
accept the suggestions of the House. The course we adopt,' 
continued Mr. Disraeli, with that engaging candour of his 
in which there was always so piquant a difficulty of distin- 
guishing between cynicism and naivete^ ' is not one flattering 
to ourselves ; but it is more flattering to a statesman to 
assist, however humbly, in effecting that which he thinks is 
for the public good than to bring forward mock measures 
which he knows the spirit of party will not pass. And let 
me tell the Member for Birmingham, who gave me that 
ironical cheer, that there are others beside himself who think 
it desirable that this question should be settled, but who 
wish it to be settled in the spirit of the Constitution.' 

The real ' flattery,' if we can suppose it to have been 
listened to, must have rather come from that tale told by 
Hope, which could induce an experienced Parliamentary 
tactician to believe that there was the slightest chance of his 



THE REFORM RESOLUTIONS 73 

being allowed to remove this question from the arena of party 
politics. Meanwhile, we need concern ourselves with only 
one of the ' distinct principles ' by which Ministers had been 
guided in framing their resolutions. It is to be found in the 
passage in which Mr. Disraeli deprecated any scheme of 
Reform which would change the historic character of the 
House of Commons. ' We do not find,' he said, ' that there 
is any security for its retaining that character, unless we 
oppose a policy which gives to any class in this country — I 
care not whether it be high or low, whether it be influenced 
by a democratical or an oligarchical feeling — a preponderant 
power in this House. And therefore, in any measures that 
we may bring forward, we shall assert that the elective fran- 
chise must be regarded as a popular privilege and not as a 
democratic right.' The events of the next three months 
were to furnish a truly remarkable commentary on this 
declaration. 

The resolutions, thirteen in number, were soon in the 
hands of the House. As might from the first have been 
anticipated, their introduction failed to attain the object 
contemplated by their authors. Until they had been ex- 
plained in debate, they were little more than vague affirma- 
tions of abstract political doctrine. Explanation, on the 
other hand, at once exposed them to criticism, as in some 
cases questionable, in others superfluous. The first, which 
recited that 'the number of electors for counties and boroughs 
in England and Wales ought to be increased,' was practi- 
cally, of course, the affirmation of a truism. It was the 
recital, under another form of words, of the proposition 
that a reform of the representative system was desirable. 
Resolutions 2 and 3, which affirmed respectively that the 
increase should be effected by a reduction of the existing 



74 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

franchise, and ' the addition of other franchises not dependent 
on value,' and ' that no one class or interest could constitu- 
tionally be invested with a predominant power over the 
rest of the community,' were, in the absence of details as to 
the contemplated amount and character of the reduction 
and additions aforesaid, absolutely uninforming. 

When these details were supplied, as they afterwards 
were by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the statement 
that the occupation franchise would be reduced to 61. in 
boroughs, and that four new so-called * fancy franchises ' 
would be created alongside of it, there was obviously no 
longer any reason why his proposals should not be embodied 
in a Bill. The procedure by resolution was obnoxious, in 
short, to highly plausible objections ; and we may further be 
quite certain that objections, whether plausible or not, would 
have been made. Neither the Reform party in the Oppo- 
sition nor the section of that body who were by conviction 
opposed to Reform, had any notion of allowing the Govern- 
ment to shift any share of its responsibility on the House. 
' Why,' asked Mr. Lowe, with that deadly directness of his, 
' is it an irresistible reason, because Whigs and Tories have 
alike failed on this question, that the right honourable 
gentleman and his colleagues should enjoy absolute 
impunity ? Why are they to have the mark of Cain set 
upon them that nobody may kill them?' The question 
would have come with better grace from one who had not 
taken so prominent a part as the querist in the murder ot 
Abel in the previous year ; but there was no answer to it. 

At a meeting of the Opposition, held at Mr. Gladstone's 
house on February 26, it was agreed to meet the resolutions 
with an amendment, inviting the Government to with- 
draw them, and proceed by way of Bill. Upon this, Mr. 



A SPLIT IN THE CABINET 75 

Disraeli gave way, and announced on the same evening in 
the House of Commons that the resolutions would be with- 
drawn, and a Bill introduced. Ten days afterwards, on 
March 4, the political world was agitated by the news that 
Lord Cranborne and two other members of the Cabinet, 
General Peel and Lord Carnarvon, had resigned. 

The history of this catastrophe has been recorded with 
exceptional fulness, not only in official explanations tendered 
according to custom by the retiring Ministers in the two 
Houses, but in the quite unofficial, but by no means un- 
amusing, narrative which was furnished by one of the 
colleagues whom they left behind them — Sir John Paking- 
ton. From this the public learnt that the Six-pound 
Franchise Bill, foreshadowed by the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer in the speech explanatory of the resolutions 
on the night of February 25, was but one and the 
more moderate of two alternative schemes of Reform 
which had been under the consideration of the Cabinet. 
The other was a measure the suggestion of which is to be 
found in the fifth resolution, the only formula of all that 
phantom group which was destined to attain a position of 
even temporary importance, and which affirmed that ' the 
principle of plurality of vote, if adopted by Parliament, 
would facilitate the settlement of the borough franchise on 
an extensive basis.' In explaining this resolution to the 
House of Commons, Mr. Disraeli contented himself with 
saying that the intention of the Government had been that 
any person who possessed one of the four new franchises 
which it was proposed to introduce — namely, the educa- 
tional qualification, the 3o/.-in-a-savings-bank qualification, 
the 5o/.-in-the-Funds qualification, and the 20i'.-a-year- 
direct-taxation qualification— should vote, not merely by his 



'je THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

franchise as occupier, but also ' for any one other of the 
new franchises which he might possess, and that Ministers 
beheved that, if that principle were adopted, it might have 
led to results very satisfactory to large numbers of people 
in this country.' He added, however, 'that they were bound 
to state frankly that this was not a view of the case which, 
if they were permitted to bring in a Bill, they should at 
all insist upon. It was not desirable, it seemed to them, ' to 
make any proposition on these questions which they had 
not a fair prospect of carrying to a successful issue.' 

No one could have guessed from this that the propo- 
sition they had been contemplating embodied a political 
change of no less magnitude than the introduction of house- 
hold suffrage, subject to the ' check ' of the dual vote, and 
still less that that proposition was but a few hours before on 
the point of being submitted to Parliament and had only at 
thelastmomentbeenabandoned. This, however, was the case. 
It was on Saturday, February 23, that the final, or what 
was supposed to be the final, scheme of the projected Re- 
form Bill was settled in Cabinet Council. On the following 
Monday morning, however. Lords Cranborne and Carnarvon 
having come to the conclusion — in which they received 
the adhesion of General Peel, who had already previously 
tendered his resignation on the same ground — that the 
Bill was one which they could not support, informed 
Lord Derby of their wish to retire from the Cabinet. A 
Council was hastily summoned to consider the new situa- 
tion ; and to continue the story in the almost breathless 
words of good Sir John Pakington : ' Imagine the diffi- 
culty and embarrassment in which the Ministry found 
themselves placed. It was then past two o'clock ; Lord 
Derby was to address the party at half-past two ; at half- 



THE TEN MINUTES BILL 7X 

past four Mr. Disraeli was to unfold the Reform scheme 
before the House of Commons. Literally, they had not 
half an hour ; they had not more than ten minutes to make 
up their minds as to what course the Ministry was to adopt. 
The public know the rest. They determined to propose, not 
the Bill agreed to on the Saturday, but an alternative measure 
which they had contemplated in the event of their large 
and liberal scheme being rejected by the House of 
Commons.' 

On March 4, some time before these trank disclosures of 
Sir John Pakington (which were made by him on offering 
himself to his constituents for re-election), Lord Cran- 
borne, speaking after General Peel, had given his own 
account of matters from his place in Parliament. Less 
animated and picturesque than that of the new Secretary for 
War, it substantially confirmed that agreeable narrative of 
the events which revolutionised the English polity. Lord 
Cranborne had, he told the House, assented to the larger 
scheme of Reform on the faith of an understanding that the 
' checks and balances supplied by the new franchises and 
the dual vote would adequately restrict its too excessive 
representation of mere numbers. The operation, however, 
of these checks and balances had not been fully investigated 
and exhibited when the resolutions were laid on the table of 
the House.' No exact statistics of the new borough elector- 
ate under household suffrage and of its numerical relation 
to the voters added by the new franchises had been prepared 
or was at any rate forthcoming ; but when General Peel 
made his original objection to the larger scheme, and talked 
of resigning if it were adopted, ' it was in the hope,' said 
Lord Cranborne, ' that the figures might be so adjusted as 
to permit the desire of the great majority of my colleagues 



78 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

to be carried out with perfect safety to the constitution . . - 
that I was one of those to urge him to remain.' 

It is not quite clear whether at this stage of the Minis- 
terial deliberations the ' larger scheme ' had definitely taken 
shape as a project for the establishment of household 
suffrage ; but at the Council of February i6, at any rate, 
this project was formally broached, and Lord Cranborne 
there and then declared it to be a proposition which was 
' to his mind inadmissible.' He believed it to have been 
abandoned, but on the following Tuesday, the 19th, it was 
revived, and with the accompaniment of certain statistics 
upon the accuracy of which, since they related to the ' com- 
pensation or counterpoise of the enfranchisement scheme, 
the whole value of the arrangement of course depended.' 
The figures were imperfect, and after discussion it was 
agreed to supplement them by further reference to the 
department which had furnished them, and to resume their 
consideration on Saturday the 23rd. Upon an inspection 
of these enlarged statistics on that day Lord Cranborne 
admitted that they ' seemed to be favourable ' ; but further 
consideration of them in private convinced him that any 
political safeguards based upon them would be illusory. 
A comparison of notes with his other doubting colleagues 
showed that they had independently arrived at the same 
conclusion. The resignations were accordingly tendered, as 
described by Sir John Pakington, and the so-called ' Ten 
Minutes Bill ' — which, however, never reached the stage of 
introduction at all, was substituted for the larger scheme. 

The rest of the story is soon told. A six-pound franchise 
pleased nobody, and was attacked from all quarters. Radi- 
cals denounced it as inadequate ; Liberals exclaimed upon 
the profligacy of Ministers who could introduce such a 



THE 'LARGER SCHEME' 79 

measure but a few months after tripping up their adversaries 
in their attempt to carry a measure based upon a seven- 
pound quahfication ; and even Conservatives so far felt the 
force of this criticism as to be ripe for surrender to that most 
immoral of all arguments, that one ' may as well be hung 
for a sheep as a lamb.' Doubtless one may ; but though it 
is the same thing to the thief it is not so to the owner of the 
stolen property. And the question which the followers of 
Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli should have asked themselves 
was not whether they would be as severely punished by the 
tongues of their adversaries for passing a six-pound franchise 
Bill as for taking the plunge into household suffrage, but 
whether the consequences to the country would not be 
infinitely more serious in the one case than the other. 

This, however, seems unhappily to have been a neglected 
side of the question. The party — meaning that consider- 
able section which in every party under our political system 
puts victory first and principle afterwards — brought pressure 
to bear upon a Government who needed sadly little pressure, 
it is to be feared, to urge them onward ; and the combined 
force of these influences determined the Prime Minister to 
submit to that rupture of the Cabinet against which he had 
been hitherto struggling, and to revert to the larger scheme. 
The resignations were accordingly accepted ; the Minis- 
terial explanations were delivered in the two Houses ; Sir 
Stafford Northcote, Sir John Pakington, and the Duke of 
Buckingham respectively succeeded to the offices vacated 
by Lord Cranborne, General Peel, and Lord Carnarvon. A 
fortnight's interval was interposed in order to enable the 
appointment of the new Ministers to be ratified by their 
constituents, and on March i8 the Reform Bill was 
launched. 



86 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Between that day and July 15, when it was read a third 
time in the House of Commons, there extends a period of 
nearly four months, the history of which it is impossible — 
I will not say for any convinced and consistent Tory, lest I 
should be idly wasting words on an extinct political species, 
but for anyone who wishes to retain his respect for Par- 
liamentary government under the English party system — 
to look back upon without shame. It is the history of a 
continuous surrender of political positions by party leaders, 
bound, not only by traditional principles but by recent, 
repeated, and emphatic pledges, to defend them. It is the 
history of the abandonment, one by one, of safeguards de- 
clared to be vital to the national welfare, and of the adoption, 
one by one, of legislative changes admitted by those who as- 
sented to them to be fraught with the gravest peril to the future 
of the State. The powerful and, though strictly measured 
in its language and temperate in its tone, the scathing speech 
delivered by Lord Cranborne on the motion for leave to 
introduce the Bill, was strangely prophetic of the course 
which legislation was destined to take. It fell short of 
entire accuracy only in under-estimating the rate of speed at 
which events were destined to advance, and in assuming that 
it would be reserved for a future Government and Parlia- 
ment to complete a revolutionary work which was to be 
consummated in a few months, and by the hands of the men 
in whose counsels he had so lately shared. 

The Bill was concisely but accurately described by Lord 
Cranborne as a ' Household Suffrage Bill, practically with two 
compensations.' Those two compensations were, ' first, the 
dual vote, and secondly, personal payment of rates ' ; and of 
these, he went on to say, he regarded one as ineffective 
for its purpose, and the other, though effective, ' almost 



LORt) CRANB0RN£ ON tHE 'CHECKS' 8^ 

tod effective' for its purpose, as certain to be swept away. 
The dual vote could only operate in very large towns, 
and only there so as to affect a very few seats, while 
in all the middle-sized and smaller boroughs the over- 
whelming mass of voters brought in by household suffrage 
would rule unchecked. 

Besides that, it was a proposal thoroughly unpalatable 
to the House of Commons. It would not pass, and would 
do no good. As to the personal payment of rates, that, he 
admitted, was a very important limitation, but what chance 
had they of sustaining it ? What it meant was that in 
towns where the Small Tenements Act was in force, no one 
whose house was ' compounded ' for would be allowed to 
vote unless he paid, over the sum he had hitherto been 
accustomed to pay the landlord, an advance of some 25 
per cent. The result of that would be that in all those 
ninety-eight out of our then total of two hundred boroughs 
in which the Small Tenements Act was in operation, ' you 
would find in one parish a " compound householder " ' who 
would have to pay 5^. a year for his vote, while in an 
adjoining parish a man of exactly the same social status living 
in a house of exactly the same size would enjoy his vote 
without any such payment. Was it likely that this galling 
and vexatious inequality would be long tolerated, or was 

' The figure of the ' compound householder,' around whom raged so 
fierce a battle in 1867, has no doubt become rather dim to the present 
generation ; and it may therefore be necessary to explain that this 
name was given to the occupiers of tenements, the landlords of which 
were permitted, under certain Acts of Parliament, to compound with the 
local authorities for the rates due from them as such occupiers. Hence, 
as one of the proposed ' checks ' on household suffrage was that ' per- 
sonal payment of rates should be a condition of the electoral qualifi- 
cation, these 'compound householders,' a very large body, would, as 
suck, have been excluded from the franchise. 

G 



%2 THE Marquis of Salisbury 

it not rather certain that the first use which the new elec- 
torate would make of the franchise would be to insist on 
their representatives sweeping it away ? Thus,' continued 
Lord Cranborne, ' you will come to simple undiluted house 
hold suffrage, and without discussing the general arguments 
for or against democracy, I am content to fall back upon 
what seems to me a simple proposition of political morality, 
that the party which behaved in Opposition as ours did last 
year is not the party to propose household suffrage.' 

This was plain speaking, but it was not more true 
as a proposition of morals than was this, which followed 
as an anticipation of events : ' We are told that the Con- 
servative party as a body have so far advanced in principles 
and sentiments that they will accept this Bill. Well, if that 
is so, I think they will be committing political suicide. . . . 
I feel certain that if the Conservative party listens so much 
to party discipline, and listens so little to the dictates of 
those principles in which they have been accustomed to 
protest they believed, it will be their ruin politically, and 
that no preservative of party discipline, and no support of 
individual statesmen will compensate to them for that result.' 

Those who, looking round the House of Commons 
to-day and seeing that the benches opposite to those occu- 
pied by the Liberals seem still pretty well filled, are dis- 
posed to sneer at this prophecy as falsified, must be 
simply in the unhappy — or is it happy? — case of those 
to whom words supply as much mental and moral susten- 
ance as facts. There is indeed 'a Conservative party,' 
and the statesman who uttered the above prediction has 
lived to lead it ; but no one knows better than its leader 
that its true name is not Conservative, but Opportunist, and 
that the one principle upon which true Conservatism in any 



THE PRINCIPLE THAT PERISHED 83 

age and in any country must depend for its vitality disap- 
peared finally from English politics in 1867. 

For what perished in that fateful year was not merely a 
particular set of opinions as to what measures will in this or 
that respect be beneficial or injurious to the State. Such 
a loss as that would have been altogether a matter of minor 
importance. Opinions change, and ought to change, in 
the natural course of human affairs ; they must often, 
whether Liberal or Conservative, be, through the natural 
infirmities of the human mind, mistaken. It was not the 
triumph of Liberal over Conservative doctrines at this crisis 
which really mattered ; what really mattered was the con- 
current abandonment of the principle — not a monopoly, 
it is fair to admit, of the Tory party — that the rule of 
wisdom, justice, and, in the highest sense of the word, of 
policy for a State, is not necessarily determined by the 
popular demands of the moment. Sacrifices to this principle, 
regarded as the supreme dictator of political conduct, had 
been more than once submitted to by political parties in the 
course of our history. Each had at times shown its willing- 
ness, in days when parties were better than their * system,' 
and the hands of their leaders had not yet been thoroughly 
' subdued to what they worked in,' to undergo long sentences 
of exclusion from office rather than surrender to popular 
movements which they deemed mistaken — each assuming 
that there was a 'better mind,' a saner judgment of the 
nation to which they might confidently appeal for a later 
approval of their action. But now for the first time one 
English party competing with its rival had determined to 
hand over the constitution and destiny of the country as a 
gift to Numbers, thereby not merely trampling under foot for 
that occasion the principle which sets the conscience and 

G 2 



84 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

conviction of the statesman before the will or whim of 
the majority, but rendering it to the last degree improbable 
that that principle would ever raise its head again. And it 
never has. The Conservative Der Freyschutz, to adapt 
Prince Bismarck's picturesque apologue, was some years in 
obtaining the ' enchanted bullets ' for which he had bartered 
his soul. He got them in '74, and brought down his 
adversary with them ; but he has been paying the penalty 
ever since. Max was not more completely submissive to 
the commands of Robin than is the modern Conservative 
party compelled to be to the Spirit of Democracy. 

The reply of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to these 
damaging criticisms of his late colleague was no less memor- 
able than the speech which called them forth. Mr. Disraeli 
did not admit his ' checks ' — or at least one of them, for 
he wisely refrained from saying anything about the dual 
vote — to be illusory. 'Were the checks placed upon the 
suffrage by the Act of 1832 swept away,' he asked, 'in a 
moment ? ' On the contrary, the ratepaying clauses of that 
Act, though they had been made at various times the object 
of much hostile agitation, were maintained. And so would 
it be with the checks introduced into the present Bill. 

It is a pity the experiment was never tried. Lord 
Cranborne may have desponded over much as to the 
probable stability of the provision insisting on the personal 
payment of rates. He may have been unduly pessimistic 
in predicting that this breakwater against the inrush 
of Democracy would be swept away at the first flow of 
the tide. But his late chief did not allow events to have 
the chance of refuting the prediction. He demolished the 
breakwater himself. 

But that of course was yet to come. On March 18, 



ANOTHER HISTORIC 'NEVER' 85 

his mind was full of the ' checks and balances ' of his Bill, 
and deeply impressed with the conviction that, thanks to 
them, he had been guilty of no political inconsistency 
in introducing it. How sadly and strangely reads this 
quotation of his words from Hansard in the light of sub- 
sequent events : 

Let my noble friend, or any hon. gentleman who has spoken, 
point to any conclusion during the debates of last year, to any 
vote that was given, to any resolution inconsistent with the 
course we have taken. (Oh !) 

Viscount Cranborne. — I never imputed any inconsistency 
to the course taken by the Government. What I said was that 
if the Government introduced household suffrage pure and 
simple, I then thought they would be guilty of inconsistency. 

The Chancellor of the Exchequer. — The Govern- 
ment will never introduce Jiousehold suffrage pure and simple. 

Nothing, perhaps, was further from Mr. Disraeli's 
thoughts than such a step when he made this reply. 
Nothing was further from Hazael's thoughts than the evil 
which Elisha prophesied that he would do unto the Children 
of Israel. And his repudiation of the prophecy was conveyed, 
as students of the Second Book of Kings may remember, 
in a metaphor, which lent it even more emphasis than Mr. 
•Disraeli threw into his disclaimer. 

Nevertheless, the Bill was destined to become a measure 
for the introduction of 'household suffrage pure and 
simple,' and the process of fulfilling that destiny began early. 
The dual vote was the first of the ' checks ' to disappear. On 
March 26, the Bill was read a second time, after two nights' 
debate, without a division ; and on April i, the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer stated, in answer to a question from Mr. 
Gladstone, that, before going into Committee on the 8th, he 



86 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

would move the omission of the clause by which it was pro- 
posed to confer this privilege. It was dropped without a single 
protest, having never indeed had the good word of anyone 
from the first, unless, to be sure, we accept as such Lord 
Cranborne's benevolent but not enthusiastic reference to it as 
'just and fair in principle, though an absolute futihty in 
practice.' This disposed of, the struggle now centred on the 
question of the personal payment of rates. Had the original 
scheme of the Government been adhered to on this point, 
and had the leader of the House really treated this principle 
as ' vital ' to his scheme, the enfranchising operation of the 
Reform Act of 1867 would beyond doubt have been greatly 
restricted, and the descent into downright Democracy 
correspondingly delayed, though for how long is a question 
of considerable uncertainty. But to abandon this principle 
was to take the plunge at once, and though it might have 
been impossible, as Lord Cranborne and others contended, 
to moor the boat for any length of time in the stream, it 
would have shown better faith and more conscientiousness 
to have made the attempt at any rate than it did to 
' shoot Niagara ' forthwith. 

Nor has it ever been]shown that the Government were on 
this point, at least, under any clear compulsion to give way. 
On others of the so-called ' compensations ' for household 
suffrage, the duress under which they acted was conspi- 
cuous enough. The two years' residential qualification was 
cut down to one year by an adverse majority of eighty-one ; 
and Ministers might reasonably have held themselves justi- 
fied in bowing on this point to the decision of the House. 
But the attempt of the Opposition to break down the 
' personal rating ' restriction never at any time prospered 
like this. The AduUamites had no mind for helping Mr. 



EXIT THE COMPOUND HOUSEHOLDER 87 

Gladstone to make the Bill more democratic than it was. 
At the ' Tea Room Conference,' as one of the secessionist 
meetings was called, they succeeded in emasculating the 
instruction which Mr. Coleridge was to have moved on 
going into Committee ; and though the Government ac- 
cepted that part of it which informed the Committee that 
they ' had power to alter the law of rating,' they certainly 
never pledged themselves thereby to such an alteration as 
they afterwards made by the repeal of the Compounding Acts. 

Again, Mr. Gladstone's amendment, proposing to enfran- 
chise the occupier ' whether he in person or his landlord is 
rated to the relief of the poor,' though lost, it is true, by a 
majority of only twenty-one, was still, in fact, defeated ; and 
a Government with a ' vital principle ' at stake should at 
least have paid so much respect to its vitality as to sur- 
render it only upon actual rejection by the House. The 
Adullamites were divided ; but there was a section of them, 
headed by Lords Grosvenor and Elcho, which would have 
stood by the Government and seen them through. But 
the agitation, hollow as it was, which was got up during the 
Easter recess, appears to have influenced their minds ; and 
it is difficult to doubt that it sealed their 'determination not 
merely to carry the Bill, but to ' dish the Whigs ' with it by 
showing an equal willingness to democratise the suffrage. 

Lord Cranborne spoke and voted in favour of Mr. Glad- 
stone's amendment. That speech and vote were consistent 
enough with the convictions which he had avowed in the 
debate on the first reading. He did not believe in the 
stability and resisting power of the barrier which ' personal 
rating' would set up, and he expressed special apprehension 
of the impetus likely to be given to corrupt canvassing by 
a provision which would encourage political organisations 



88 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

to pay men's rates wholesale in order to get them on the 
register. In any case, however, and as a piece of legitimate 
Parliamentary tactics. Lord Cranborne would have been 
justified in supporting Mr. Gladstone with the same motive 
that induced men like Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman to vote 
with him — that, namely, of defeating the Bill. It is probable 
that even their late colleague had not yet taken the full mea- 
sure of the pliability of Ministers, but imagined that if the 
House of Commons pronounced against their ' vital ' princi- 
ple of personal rating, the Government would feel bound to 
abandon their Bill and tender their resignations. He could 
hardly have foreseen that his late leader would volunteer to 
deprive the Bill of its ' vital principle ' with his own hand. 

But, on May 13, the Government assented to the principle 
of an amendment creating a lodger franchise, and, taxed by 
Sir Rainald Knightley with this derogation from the principle 
of the ' personal payment ' of rates, the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer let fall these significant words : ' The hon. 
baronet is not for a moment, I suppose, prepared to contend 
that the payment of rates is the entire principle of the Bill.' 
Here a laugh followed, apparently from some honourable 
members who detected these preparations for a new retreat. 
' Does any gentleman who laughs,' continued the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, ' pretend that it is the entire principle of 
the Bill? Is it the principle of the franchise which is 
founded on the possession of a sum in the savings-bank ? 
Is it the principle of the franchise which is founded on the 
possession of a certain amount in the Funds ? Is it the 
principle of the franchise which is founded on the payment 
of a certain amount of direct taxes ? ' 

No, truly ; it was not the principle of any of these fran- 
chises ; but unfortunately, none of them were to escape 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE CHECKS 89 

destruction themselves. The check which was to be dis- 
pensed with because three other checks remained was finally 
abandoned on May 17, and when, on the 28th, Sir Roundell 
Palmer moved to omit the clause by which these three other 
checks were to be established, Mr. Disraeli concluded a speech 
of brief valediction to the group of surviving ' safeguards ' 
with the observation that, as the morning sitting then in pro- 
gress was drawing near its appointed hour of adjournment, 
and as the Government, by not passing the clause, would just 
have time to complete the first part of the Bill, they would 
accept Sir Roundell Palmer's motion ' without troubling the 
Committee to divide ' ! 

Ministers, in other words, having thrown overboard one 
* vital principle,' embodied in the compound householder, 
were now allowing these remaining principles to follow it with- 
out a struggle. Between April 8 and May 28 all had gone : 
dual vote, personal rating, two years' residential qualifica- 
tion, educational franchise, savings-bank franchise, taxing 
franchise, fundholding franchise — all ; and when the Re- 
port stage of the Bill was reached. Parliament stood face 
to face with that 'household suffrage pure and simple,' 
which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had vowed that the 
Government would ' never introduce.' 

It must have been a source of unfailing gratification to 
the present Prime Minister to reflect, amid all the vicissitudes 
of his subsequent political career, that he at least was not 
' art or part ' in this disastrous measure ; that he bore testi- 
mony against it on every lawful occasion ; that he sacrificed 
place and power, and what is harder to a statesman con- 
scious of administrative ability, opportunities of public 
service, to the duty of resisting it ; and that in unhesitating 
defiance of the reproaches of the political partisan, hg 



90 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Steadily opposed by speech and vote its passage through 
the House of Commons. 

It was on July 15 that the motion for the third reading 
of the Bill was made, and that the member for Stamford 
found his last opportunity for liberating his soul. And 
thus he proceeded to review the history of the measure 
and of the successive transformations which it had under- 
gone. When it passed its second reading it ' bristled with 
precautions, guarantees, and securities.' Now that the House 
had reached the third reading, all these precautions, 
guarantees, and securities had disappeared. It had been 
proposed by the member for Northamptonshire that beside 
the Bill as it now stood there should be printed a copy of 
the Bill as it was originally introduced. Lord Cranborne 
would have liked ' to see yet another document,' contain- 
ing the demands made by the right hon. gentleman the 
member for South Lancashire (Mr. Gladstone) on the 
occasion of the second reading of the Bill. 

They were ten in number. First, he demanded the lodger 
franchise. Well, the lodger franchise has been given. Secondly, 
and this is the only doubtful one, provisions to prevent 
traffic in votes. Such provisions, however, are to be con- 
tained in another Bill, about the probable success of which 
I know nothing. My impression is that traffic in votes will be 
one of the results of this Bill. The right hon. gentleman next 
demanded the abolition of obnoxious distinctions between com- 
pounders and non-compounders. Not only have those obnoxious 
distinctions been abolished, but all distinctions whatever have 
disappeared. The fourth demand of the right hon. gentleman 
was that the taxing franchise should be omitted. It has been 
omitted. Fifthly, that the dual vote should be omitted. It has 
been omitted. Sixthly, that the redistribution of seats must be 
considerably enlarged. It has been enlarged full fifty per cent. 
Seventhly, that the county franchise must be reduced. It ,ha^ 



THE PARTING SHOT 9I 

been reduced to something like that point at which it stood in 
the proposal of last year. Eighthly, that the voting papers must 
be omitted. To my extreme regret the voting papers have been 
omitted. The last two demands were that the educational and 
savings-bank franchises should be omitted 

Here some uneasy conscience on the Ministerial benches 
attempted to relieve itself with a cry of ' Question ! ' 

Why what, sir, is the question but this ? Remember that 
the history of this Bill is quite peculiar. I venture to say that 
there is no man in this House of Commons who can remember 
any Bill being treated in the way that this Bill has been dealt 
with. No man in the House can remember a Government who 
have introduced a Bill of this importance, and who have yielded 
in Committee amendments so vitally altering the whole consti- 
tution and principle of the Bill as has been done in the present 
instance. ... I venture to impress this upon the House be- 
cause I have heard it said that this Bill is a Conservative 
triumph. If it is a Conservative triumph to have adopted the 
principles of your most determined adversary ; if it is a Conser- 
vative triumph to have introduced a Bill guarded with precau- 
tions and securities, and to have abandoned every one of those 
precautions and securities at the bidding of your opponents, then 
in the whole course of your annals I will venture to say the 
Conservative party has won no triumph so signal as this. 

The * signal triumph ' was not yet quite won, but it was 
drawing very near its consummation. On July 16 the Bill 
was sent up to the House of Lords and was read a second 
time on the 23rd of that month. It was some five or six 
days in passing through Committee, and returned at the 
expiration of that time to the Lower House with a series of 
amendments, among which only one of any importance — 
that introducing the principle of the ' three-cornered con- 
stituency ' in certain boroughs and counties, and in the City 
of London — was agreed to by the Commons. The modi- 



92 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

fications introduced by the Lords into the clauses relating to 
the lodger and to the county occupation franchises were, on 
division, disagreed with, as also was the new clause, inserted 
on the motion of Lord Salisbury, in restoration of the 
original proposal of the Bill to allow votes to be taken by 
means of voting papers. Thus, therefore, this momentous 
measure of legislation, to which the Royal Assent was 
given on August 1 5, took its place in the statute book in 
substantially the same form as that in which it left the 
House of Commons. 



93 



CHAPTER VI 

Relations of Lord Cranborne with Mr. Disraeli — The Irish Church 
resolutions — His attitude with regard to them — Becomes Marquis 
of Salisbury — The Suspensory Bill — In the Lords — Lord Salisbury's 
speech — Rejection of the Bill — Dissolution and new Parliament, 

Differences between public men are always apt to be 
exaggerated by the observer from without. Yet the breach 
which had been created between Lord Cranborne and his 
chief by the events of 1867 might well seem serious, even 
to experienced politicians. It is likely, indeed, that smaller 
men would have been permanently estranged. A statesman 
of a different temperament from that of Mr. Disraeli might 
have cherished a grudge against the colleague by whose 
retirement at a critical juncture his position had been 
seriously endangered, and who afterwards had not hesitated 
to oppose him again and again by speech and vote on more 
than one question, which, if carried against him, would have 
been fatal to his Government. On the other hand, there 
are men who in Lord Cranborne's position would have 
bitterly resented the sudden arrest of an official career of 
high success and still higher promise, by the uninvited 
duty of resisting a measure which ought never to have 
been introduced. But the retired Minister was animated by 
the patriotism that merges private in public considerations ; 
his chief had the politic magnanimity of the thorough man 
of the world ; and both enjoyed the inestimable advantage 



94 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

of being opposed by a politician whose influence in un- 
designedly healing feuds among his political adversaries 
has so often earned him the benediction pronounced upon 
the peacemakers. 

Mr. Gladstone, ere many months had elapsed, established 
a fresh claim to inclusion among the blessed of the Ninth 
Beatitude by announcing a departure in policy which was 
sure to reunite the Conservatives of all schools in opposition 
to him. In consultation with his friends during the Parlia- 
mentary recess of 1867, he discovered the existence of a 
' upas-tree ' in Ireland, of which one of the stems was repre- 
sented by the Established Church in that country. Accord- 
ingly, almost immediately after the reassembling of Parlia- 
ment in 1868, Mr. Gladstone gave notice of his intention to 
move that the House resolve itself into a Committee ' for the 
purpose of considering the condition of the Established 
Church in Ireland,' and on March 30, this motion was 
brought forward. It was, of course, opposed alike by 
Ministers and their late colleagues, but it did not in the 
first instance effect a complete reunion between them. The 
Government met Mr. Gladstone's proposition by an amend- 
ment protesting against any prejudgment of the question 
in an expiring Parliament elected under an extinct repre- 
sentative system. Lord Cranborne held that the Conserva- 
tive party ought to pronounce clearly and emphatically 
against the object of the motion, and in favour of the 
principle of a Protestant Church establishment in Ireland. 

Nor can it be denied, in the light of subsequent 
events, that the bolder mode of meeting Mr. Gladstone's 
motion might well have been the wiser even from a tactical 
point of view. That the Parliament of 1867 was absolutely 
without authority to pronounce condemnation on the Irish 



PARLIAMENT AND THE IRISH CHURCH 95 

Church is no doubt technically true enough. Of such 
jurisdiction as it might have possessed over the question it 
had deliberately divested itself, and upon no possible 
theory of the constitution could its pronouncement carry 
any constitutional weight whatever. But undoubted as these 
truths are, they are of the truths that profit little. The 
utterances of six hundred and fifty — however elected — repre- 
sentatives of a people do not lose all the moral authority 
which would otherwise have belonged to them simply be- 
cause the composition of the electorate has been changed. 
By none save those who adopt the very lowest and most 
mechanical view of the representative function could any 
such contention be possibly maintained ; for its mainten- 
ance must, to all save these, involve the further assumption, 
notoriously at variance with the facts, that a reform of the 
electoral system entails an entire, or at least a considerable 
change in the personnel of the elected. Apart, however, 
from all question as to individual prospects of re-election, 
the Parliament of 1867, and any political party contained in 
it, still collectively possessed, and could not, indeed, divest 
itself of, its moral right and duty — as a body or a portion of 
a body chosen for its assumed fitness for that purpose — to 
advise the country on any political question arising during 
its term of service. The Conservatives in this Parliament 
would have lost nothing at the then approaching election 
by frankly declaring themselves against disestablishment. 

What they lost by the opposite course it is easy to 
see. They took the first step in deliberate abnegation ot 
that duty by the faithful and energetic discharge of which 
they could alone hope to atone for the democratisation of 
the suffrage — the duty of leading, or at least endeavouring to 
lead, the unskilled multitudes whom they had enfranchised. 



96 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

They set the first example of inviting the people to issue 
their 'mandate' to their delegates. They made the first 
public recognition of the new doctrine that right and wrong 
should be what the constituencies upon consultation shall 
declare them to be ; that the path of duty lies only and always 
in the direction in which ' the cat jumps ' ; that the sole 
canon of justice is the ' length of the foot ' of Demos. 

Or, if we prefer, we may call it the second lesson in 
Opportunism, the passing of the Reform Bill being itself 
the first. It was an attempt to 'stand in' with the new 
electorate, in case they should desire the overthrow of the 
Irish Church. It was conceived in the same spirit as the 
great ' Whig-dishing ' enterprise of the year before, and was, 
indeed, inspired largely by apprehension lest the ' dishers ' 
should do something to offend the prejudices of their newly- 
created masters before the profits of the ' dishing ' operation 
had been reaped. Their solicitude, as we know, was thrown 
away, and it is difficult to imagine that any display of courage 
in speaking out their real minds to the new electorate on 
this or any other subject could have earned them a more 
crushing rebuff than they actually received. 

Lord Cranborne approached the motion in no such 
temporising spirit. All that is most truly and deeply Conser- 
vative in his mind and temperament has ever been called 
into activity by questions of this kind. The fibre of attach- 
ment to the principle of an Established Church goes down 
to the very root of those convictions from which his secular 
politics spring. He could not, as he told Mr. Gladstone in 
the course of this debate, confess, like that distinguished 
person, to the experience of having escaped ' from the spell 
of the sentiment in favour of an Established Church.' ' That 
sentiment,' he frankly admitted — and the simple candour of 



"SUCCEEDS TO MARQUISATE 97 

the avowal seems to carry us back much more than three- 
and-twenty years from the age of Parhamentary cynicism in 
which we now Hve — ' still exercises a hold over me which I 
regard as sacred.' So strong was it that Lord Cranborne 
owned his inability to emancipate himself from it, even in a 
case in which, as he candidly acknowledged, the principle 
of an Established Church was put to a very severe test, and 
its defenders had to rely more upon abstract and a priori 
argument and less upon appeals to expediency than could 
have been wished. ' Even as applied to Ireland,' said he, 
' it is a principle which I will not desert ; it is a principle 
which has done so much good in past times ; it is a principle 
from which we may hope so much hereafter . . . that 
even if I were inclined to doubt of its soundness, it would 
not be in this moment of its trial and adversity that I should 
shrink from upholding it.' 

In this interesting and courageous speech, Lord Cran- 
borne was unconsciously taking leave of the House of 
Commons. Mr., Gladstone's resolution was carried by a 
majority of fifty-six on April 3, and Parliament immediately 
afterwards adjourned for the Easter recess. On April 12, 
the second Marquis of Salisbury died, and on May 7 his 
son took his seat in the House of Lords. 

Not every debater of eminence in the Lower House finds 
acceptance among the more fastidious audience on the other 
side of the Central Hall, but Lord Salisbury's oratory had 
always combined the pungency and animation which win 
favour in one House with the power of argument and 
dignity of utterance which are the qualities chiefly prized in 
the other. Almost immediately upon his entrance into the 
Upper Chamber, he stepped into his natural place as one of 
the leaders of its debates, and only a week after he took his 

H 



98' THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

seat he delivered a short but pregnant speech upon a pro- 
posal to give legislative effect to some of the recommenda- 
tions of the Royal Commission on Ritual, which had then 
just presented its Report. The warning which he addressed 
to Lord Shaftesbury on that occasion, as to the danger of 
hasty and partisan legislation against ritual, and the strife 
which it would stir up in the Church, was destined a few 
years after to be amply confirmed. The future opponent of 
the Public Worship Regulation Act was vainly admonishing 
the most active of its future sponsors. 

A question, however, of more immediate urgency was 
soon to engage the attention of the House of Lords and its 
new member. Having carried his Irish Church resolutions 
through the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone had there- 
upon brought in a Bill to suspend appointments to all 
vacant ecclesiastical offices in the Church of Ireland. The 
propriety of this meastire could no doubt be defended — by 
Mr. Gladstone ; and by him possibly with an inexhaustible 
wealth of argument. But to less gifted persons it still presents 
itself in the light of a fresh step in advance along that path 
of usurpation upon which the majority of the House ot 
Commons had been prevailed upon to enter. For if it was, 
constitutionally speaking, ultra vires of the unreformed 
Parliament to pronounce judgment on the Irish Church, it 
was going still further beyond those powers to assume that 
this judgment would be ratified by the new constituencies. 
Yet nothing less than that assumption was implied in the 
attempt to arrest the usual course of appointment to eccle- 
siastical offices. If it was desired to avoid the appear- 
ance of prejudging the electoral question, the status quo 
should have been studiously maintained ; and it was clearly 
part of the status quo that vacancies should be filled up as 



THE SUSPENSORY BILL 9^ 

they occurred. Obviously, however, the intention was to 
force the hand of the new ParHament, and indirectly to 
commit the House of Lords to a recognition of the right of 
an unreformed House of Commons to condemn the existence 
of the Established Church of Ireland. 

The Bill, carried by large majorities through the Lower 
House, came on for second reading in the House of Lords on 
June 25, and on the second night of the adjourned debate its 
purpose was exposed and denounced in a speech of much 
force and eloquence by Lord Salisbury. He pointed out 
that the promoters of the measure which thus affected, but 
only affected, to reserve the question for the decision of the 
new electorate, were themselves irrevocably pledged to the 
disendowment and disestablishment of the Irish Church ; 
and he insisted on the truth that there is no essential dis- 
tinction between private and so-called ' public ' property, or 
between the plunder of a corporation and the robbery of 
an individual. Though there might, he admitted, be reason 
for reforming the Irish Church, the only argument for dis- 
endowing it was that a certain number of persons envied it 
the possession of its property, and he contended that to 
yield to an attack so inspired would be to endanger the 
tenure of all kinds of property whatever. As to the appli- 
cation of the ' test of numbers ' to the question of maintaining 
the Irish Church, he protested, and with true prescience, 
against the admission of an argument which would be 
equally available for employment, and has, as we all know, 
been since employed, to justify the disestablishment of the 
Church in Wales. But it was later on in this remarkable 
speech that Lord Salisbury gave the most striking proof 
of statesmanlike quality in the penetration which enabled 
him to pierce to the heart of the Irish trouble. 

H 2 



loo THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Your proposal (he said) seems to be to still the waters ef 
this agitating time by offering up a victim to the avenging 
deities ; but are you quite sure that the avenging deities will 
accept your offering ? I have heard many elaborate attempts 
to prove that Fenianism is the true necessity that has caused 
this movement. But is it not an extraordinary phenomenon 
that, for the first time in the history of rebellion, we have rebels 
who do not know the cause of their rebellion ? This is an age 
of rebellion : we have seen them in all countries ; but I have 
never before heard of one where rebels were at a loss to state 
the grievances they desired to see removed. You tell us that 
though the Fenians never raised a cry against the Established 
Church, it is the Established Church which is really at the 
bottom of their agitation. It is impossible to conceal from 
ourselves that something very different is at the bottom of the 
Fenian movement ; and I suspect that when the Irish people 
hear that many Liberal landlords have joined in the attack on 
the Irish Church, they will say the reason is that they think 
they will save themselves by making the parson their Jonah, 
and throwing him overboard. My lords, it is against the land 
and not against the Church that the Fenian agitation is really 
directed. You offer them what they do not ask for ; you offer 
them that which will not pacify them. Talk of the monuments 
of conquest : the landlord is a much more complete monument 
of conquest than the clergyman. The clergyman does not hurt 
the peasant ; if the clergyman be taken away the peasant would 
be no richer but rather poorer ; but the landlord holds the 
property which the peasant in his traditions will remember once 
to have belonged to his sept. If you seek to appease the danger 
by mere concession ; if you yield to the mere demands of anger, 
or to use the euphemistic language we have heard, if Fenian 
outrages are to make you reason calmly and dispassionately — it 
is to the landlord and not to the clergyman that you should 
really turn your attention. 

To us of to-day these observations read, no doubt, like 
truisms, but that is because we read them by the light of 
nearly a quarter of a century's subsequent experience. Those 



REPLY TO LORD CLARENDON lOI 

who can recall the talk of the doctrinaire Liberalism of 1868- 
74, will well remember the stress which was laid upon the 
' healing ' effect of the policy of disestablishment. It was 
not, indeed, denied that land legislation would also be neces- 
sary, but undoubtedly, at that date, the message of peace 
which was finally despatched to Ireland in 1869 was repre- 
sented as likely to be quite as important and far-reaching in 
its pacificatory effects as the boon which was to be given the 
tenant in the following year. 

It was not enough, however, to expose the fatuity of this 
expectation : Lord Salisbury had still to deal with the inva- 
riable argument— if overbearing bluster can be so de- 
scribed — which is called out for service on these occasions. 
He had still to answer those who contended that because the 
House of Commons had voted in favour of a certain course 
of policy it was the duty of the House of Lords to bow to 
it forthwith. Lord Salisbury's answer was an amplification 
of the views expressed by him in the controversy with Mr. 
Gladstone on the question of the repeal of the paper duties. 
Lord Clarendon, as became a conscientious, not to say a 
superstitious. Whig, had contended that it was the duty of 
the Peers to ' pay greater attention to the majorities of the 
other House of Parliament,' a process which, with eminently 
Whiggish confidence, he appears to have regarded as neces- 
sarily identical with ' watching public opinion more closely.' 
To Lord Salisbury it occurred to ask his noble friend ' whe- 
ther he had considered for what purpose the House exists, 
and whether he would be willing to go through the humili- 
ation of being a mere echo and supple tool of the other 
House in order to secure for himself the luxury of mock 
legislation.' And he went on to lay down what is un- 
doubtedly the spund constitutional principle of action to be 



J 02 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

observed by the House of Lords in all its dealings with 
•the other branch of the Legislature — the principle which he 
has himself invariably upheld, both in its injunctions and 
its prohibitions, both on its positive and its negative side, 
throughout his political life, and his staunch fidelity to 
which has enabled him to hold steadily on his course between 
the Opportunist and the Impracticable, during the three- 
and-twenty years which have passed since the government 
of the country was handed over to Numbers. 

When the opinion of your countrymen has declared itself, 
and you see that their convictions — their firm, deliberate, sus- 
tained convictions— are in favour of any course, I do not for a 
moment deny that it is your duty to yield. It may not be a 
pleasant process ; it may even make some of you wish that 
some other arrangement were existing ; but it is quite clear that 
whereas a member of a Government, when asked to do that 
which is contrary to his convictions, may resign, and a member 
of the House of Commons when asked to support any measure 
contrary to his convictions may abandon his seat, no such course 
is open to your lordships ; and therefore in those rare and great 
occasions on which the national mind has fully declared itself 
I do not doubt your lordships would yield to the opinion of the 
country, otherwise the machinery of government could not be 
carried on. But there is an enormous step between that and 
being the mere echo of the House of Commons. 

And he added, in words well calculated to appeal to the 
pride of an historic assembly : 

I have no fear of the conduct of the House of Lords in this 
respect. I am quite sure, whatever judgment may be passed 
oh us, whatever predictions may be made, be your term of 
existence long or short, you will never consent to act except as 
a free, independent House of the Legislature, and that you will 
consider any other more timid or subservient course as at once 
unworthy of your traditions, unworthy of your honour, and most 
of all, unworthy of the nation you serve. 



THE WAGES OF POLITICAL SIN I03 

The Suspensory Bill was deservedly rejected by the Lords, 
and nothing more remained but to wind up the business of 
the session and prepare for the appeal to the new constitu- 
encies. Parliament was prorogued on July 31, and dissolved 
on November 11. 'Derby told his friends,' Lord Shaftes- 
bury had written in a letter of March 1867, 'that if they 
passed his Bill they would be in office many years.' The Con- 
servatives were now to test the value of his promises. They 
went to the vast multitudes whom, by an unparalleled act 
of tergiversation, they had converted into electors, and asked 
for their reward ; and the new electors replied to them by 
sending back their opponents to Parliament in a majority 
of over a hundred. The losers were aghast at the alleged 
ingratitude of the constituencies ; the winners delighted with 
their assumed intelligence. Inexperienced as they were, said 
the latter, they had already proved that they could distin- 
guish between the real and the pretended authors of their 
enfranchisement. Others were of opinion that the electors 
were thinking less of services past than of favours to come. 
It matters not which was right. One thing was certain, 
that the gigantic adventure of the Conservatives in legis- 
lative bribery had ended in electoral disaster. 

And so may it ever be ! 



104 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 



CHAPTER VII 

Irish Church Disestablishment Bill — Lord Salisbury accepts and assists 
to pass it with amendments — Negotiates compromise — Parlia- 
mentary Procedure and Life Peerage Bills — Elected Chancellor of 
the University of Oxford — Irish Land Act of 1870 — Lord Salisbury 
on 'the Oracle' — Army Purchase Bill and Royal Warrant — 
Increasing unpopularity of the Government — Collier and Ewelme 
Rectory Scandals — Defeat of the Irish University Bill — Dissolution 
and Conservative victory at the polls— Mr. Gladstone resigns. 

Lord Salisbury was now to be called upon to prove the 
loyalty and sincerity of his adherence to those principles of 
action which, in the debate on the Suspensory Bill, he had 
pressed upon the House of Lords. He had admitted that 
' whenever the opinion of their countrymen had declared 
itself, and they saw that their convictions— their firm, delibe- 
rate, sustained convictions — were in favour of any course, it 
was the duty of that House to yield.' Whether the verdict 
against the Irish Church Establishment which Mr. Glad- 
stone succeeded in ' rushing ' through the masses of newly 
enfranchised electors, many of whom had probably never 
heard of the question before, could be accurately described 
as the expression of ' a firm, deliberate, sustained conviction,' 
may well be doubted ; but Lord Salisbury had too much 
moderation and political wisdom to cavil at it on this score. 
He had realised what the ' leap in the dark ' meant, and was 
more resigned to its consequences than many of those who 
had taken it with a lighter heart. He knew that the pro- 



THE IRISH CHURCH ACT lOS 

nouncement of the constituencies against the Irish Church 
.was as 'deliberate' a decision as we were likely to get, at 
any rate for many years to come, from the new demo- 
cracy, and he accepted it accordingly. A recently published 
biography of Archbishop Tait has shown the admirable spirit 
in which, when Mr. Gladstone's Irish Church Act reached 
the Upper House, Lord Salisbury exerted himself to over- 
come the objections of its more vehement opponents in the 
Peers, and to avert the grave constitutional crisis to which 
its rejection would have given rise. 

The session of 1869 was mainly occupied, of course, 
in the * heroic ' measure of disestablishment ; but spasmodic 
attempts were made, with the abortive results invariable in 
sessions dedicated to heroic measures, to pass useful mea- 
sures of legislation. With one such measure Lord Salisbury's 
name was connected as originator and promoter, and to 
another, of more doubtful policy perhaps, he gave his active 
support. Their fate may be shortly indicated by observing 
that the propriety of the changes proposed by them has 
been again discussed within the last two years. 

The former measure, introduced in March 1869, was 
directed to the repeal of that rule of Parliamentary pro- 
cedure which requires that Bills should pass through both 
Houses of the Legislature in the same session in order to 
become law. Assuming that legislation is a desirable end 
in itself — which few people ever have the courage to deny, 
and the absolute denial of which might possibly be too 
sweeping a proposition— it is difficult to defend the existence 
of this rule. Even a partial justification of it is possible 
only to those who hold — again a proposition beyond the 
sustainment of any but the exceptionally courageous — that 
the mischievous Bills introduced in any given session so 



I06 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

much outnumber the salutary or merely harmless ones that 
the gain of arresting the former outweighs the loss incurred 
by interposing obstacles to the latter. 

By Lord Salisbury's Parliamentary Proceedings Bill, 
introduced during this session, it was proposed to enact 
that any measure which had passed one House might, 
subject to the assent of the Crown and the two Houses to 
such procedure, be considered by the other House in the 
ensuing session. By this means Parliament would have 
been enabled not only to avoid the enforced extinction 
of measures which it desired to pass, but to obviate the 
necessity of hurriedly and inadequately considering their 
provisions at the fag-end of the session, to the discomfort 
and indignation of the judges who have subsequently to 
interpret them, and sometimes to the serious loss and injury 
of the Queen's lieges. Lord Salisbury's Bill was read a 
second time in the House of Lords and referred to a joint 
committee of the two Houses. Ministers, however, declined 
to bestow their patronage upon it ; and as in that pre- 
Parnellite period. Governments with substantial majorities 
behind them knew not what it was to be compelled to drop 
Ministerial measures, over which weeks of public time had 
been spent, at the end of a session, its urgency was naturally 
not very apparent to the official mind. Yet it seemed, and 
seems still to most of us, a safe and salutary reform enough 
in its way, and one cannot help feehng some surprise that 
after the experience of Administrations of both parties during 
the last fifteen years, there should still be apparently so 
general a reluctance on the part of what are called, apparently 
by way of distinction, ' responsible politicians ' — though it is 
to be hoped that all, even the most mischievous or most 
tedious, members of Parliament will have to answer some- 



LIFE PEERAGES BILL 10/ 

where, either here or hereafter, for their political conduct — 
to take up the proposal seriously and procure its adoption. 

The other measure which Lord Salisbury endeavoured, 
in this case only as supporter, to promote during the present 
session was Lord Russell's Life Peerage Bill. Of the 
principle of this Bill, which aimed at supplying the House 
of Lords with ' new blood ' — that very old desideratum in 
the minds of many reformers — by the creation of life peers, 
subject to certain stringent rules as to the maximum number 
who might be created in the same year or sit at the same 
time, he heartily approved. He contended that the chief 
deficiency in the House of Lords was a want of representa- 
tives of the mercantile and industrial interests, who would 
bring their practical knowledge and experience to bear on 
many subjects which came before the Lords, especially such 
as related to the health and moral condition of the people. 
And to this contention, which is at least practical in spirit, 
if the policy advocated in it be not easily practicable in fact, 
he added another of a more abstract, and it must be said 
also, of a more questionable kind. ' We must try,' he 
declared, ' to impress on the country the fact that because we 
are not an elective House, we are not a bit the less a repre- 
sentative House, and not until the constitution of the House 
plainly reveals that fact shall we be able to retain perma- 
nently in face of the advance of the House of Commons, the 
ancient privileges and constitution of this House.' 

It was hardly with such energy of language that the Lord 
Salisbury of 1889 recommended to the House of Lords the 
Bill for the creation of life peerages which he introduced 
in that year. In the interval of twenty years which has 
elapsed between these two essays in legislation he has no 
doubt learnt two things : first, that no attempt to emphasise 



I08 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

the ' representative ' character of the House by admitting a 
few members on a different footing from the rest of the peers 
would be in the least likely to conciliate that Radical hos- 
tility which will be satisfied with nothing short of the destruc- 
tion, actual or virtual, of a Second Chamber altogether ; 
and, secondly, that it is doubtful whether, in the face of 
this hostihty, any concession which should visibly modify 
the immemorial character and constitution of the Upper 
House would not tend rather to weaken than to strengthen 
it for its struggle with its democratic assailants. Such 
change of attitude on Lord Salisbury's part, however, 
towards the Bill, would not in any case have affected its 
fortunes one way or the other ; for in 1869, as in 1889, it 
was the malignant reception openly preparing for it in the 
Commons, and foreshadowed in the former year by an 
intemperate utterance of Mr. Bright, which led to the disap- 
pearance of the measure, in one case by positive rejection, 
in the other by withdrawal in the House of Lords. 

In October of this year the dignified office of Chancellor 
of the University of Oxford, which has been held by so 
many illustrious Englishmen, was vacated by the death of 
Lord Derby, and the almost unanimous voice of the 
University designated Lord Salisbury as his successor. 
The selection was one of singular fitness, and it may indeed 
be doubted whether, wise and fortunate as our two ancient 
Universities have been throughout their history in their 
choice of occupants for the Chancellor's chair, there has 
ever been a case in which office and incumbent were more 
obviously and indisputably * made for each other.' Lord 
Salisbury's election to the Chancellorship was carried in a 
Convocation holden on November 12, 1869, without a 
dissentient voice, 



'^guidance' or 'government'? 109 

The history of the years 1869 and 1870 was destined to 
afford a fresh proof of the vanity of attempting to bribe the 
agents and instruments of Irish disorder into tranquiUity by 
the bestowal of so-called legislative ' boons ' on an entirely 
different class of people. The disestablishment of the 
Church in the former year produced no improvement in the 
state of Ireland. Crime and outrage abounded during the 
winter, and early in the following year Ministers were com- 
pelled to introduce a stringent Peace Preservation Bill for the 
re-establishment of something like law and order in the dis- 
tracted country. It was a melancholy confirmation of Lord 
Salisbury's predictions in the debate on the Irish Church 
Suspensory Bill of 1868. The supporters of that measure 
had urged the constituencies to overthrow an institution of 
which no one complained, in order to quiet a number of 
people who were loudly denouncing an institution which 
they had not yet succeeded in shaking. The inevitable 
result had followed, and the opportunity seemed favourable 
for reminding the men who had now assumed the responsi- 
bilities of government that whereas in this country we are 
' content and have long been content to guide, in Ireland it 
is essential that we should govern. Until,' said Lord 
Salisbury, ' you have learnt that, until you have established 
it deeply in the minds of the Irish people, you will not 
get them to listen to your views and arguments, nor will 
you gain the full result of those remedial measures which, as 
far as they are just, I heartily approve of.' 

Another of these ' remedial measures,' perhaps not going 
beyond what was at the moment just, but destined to open 
the way for subsequent legislation of the greatest injustice 
and the worst possible example was to be introduced the 
same year. The Irish Land Act was accepted by the 



no THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Conservative party, Lord Salisbury among them, and allowed 
to pass unopposed. Without the gift of supernatural pre- 
science, it would have been difficult for the Opposition of 
that day to adopt any other attitude. The disputes, how- 
ever, between the supporters of the Bill and its adversaries 
as to whether a measure which forbade Irish landlords 
and tenants to ' contract themselves out of its operation was 
or was not conformable to the true doctrines of political 
economy, afforded Lord Salisbury an opportunity for a 
characteristic exercise of his powers in that kind of sarcastic 
raillery of which he is a master. 

Political economy (he said) is an oracle whose utterances 
we profoundly respect ; but which, like a certain oracle of old,, 
is apt to suit its utterances to the wishes of those who have the 
guardianship of it for the time being. On a certain occasion, 
when the Delphic Oracle was in the power of the Macedonian 
army, its utterances were said to be ' Philippised,' and I am 
afraid that the utterances of political economy nowadays are 
only too apt to be ' Gladstonised.' ^ When I first entered 
Parliament it used to be regarded as an axiom that could not 
be controverted, that commercial treaties were founded on 
erroneous and unsound principles, and could not be for the 
benefit of the countries entering into them. Circumstances, 
however, have changed ; political economy has reviewed its 
doctrines, and commercial treaties are regarded as the most 
orthodox things imaginable. Again, some time ago it was a 
fundamental doctrine of political economy that Government 
should not enter into manufacturing operations, whereas it is 
now actually proposed that our Government shall manufacture 
coin for foreign states, and I presume that political economy 

• It is not often that Lord Salisbury is caught tripping in his 
scholarship ; but it will be seen that in this case he has misemployed 
the Greek expression (which was ' to Philippise,' ' to Medise,' &c., 
not to i>e Philippised, Medised, &c. ) to the weakening, perhaps of his 
own epigram. 



THE 'DELPHIC ORACLE' 111 

has altered its language accordingly. And so it is with respect 
to liberty of contract. Formerly it was supposed that political 
economy required that the power of contract should be unre- 
stricted ; whereas nothing now can be more admirable or more 
just than that people should be deprived of that power. Amid 
all the vagueness and uncertainty that prevails upon the subject, 
there is at least one proposition in which we feel absolutely 
certain, and that is, that political economy is the property of 
the Liberal party, and that, therefore, its doctrines must take 
whatever form may best suit their views for the time being. 

And the arrangement thus described did in fact subsist 
for another ten or eleven years ; at the end of which period 
the complaisance of even this most pliable of oracles was 
exhausted, and Mr. Gladstone found it necessary formally 
to evict the Pythia, tripod and all, without a penny of 
' compensation for disturbance,' and to bid her take up her 
abode on one or other of the more distant planets of our 
system. 

In Lord Salisbury's attitude towards the Irish legislation 
of the Government, and generally in his whole action during 
the Parliament of 1868-74, the marks of a continuous 
political development are, I think, quite plainly discernible ; 
and they prepare us for the statesman who holds the first 
post in the councils of the Crown to-day. Strenuously as 
the distinguished seceder from Lord Derby's Cabinet had 
fought against the Reform Act of 1867, he shewed himself 
fully prepared, in our practical English spirit, to accept, 
and, so far as was needful for the effective defence of new 
Conservative positions, accommodate himself to, its conse- 
quences. There was nothing of the spirit of the irrecon- 
cilable French Legitimist — a picturesque figure, but an abso- 
lutely impotent factor, in the politics of his country — in Lord 
Salisbury's Parliamentary action and tactics. He recognised 



112 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

the necessity of compromise on many political questions ill 
which, under the old franchise, he would doubtless have 
counselled the Peers to resistance ; while at the same time 
he was careful never to yield up a single stronghold to the 
mere bouncing demonstrations of its assailants. 

Thus the attempt to force the Army Organisation Bill 
through Parliament in the shape of a simple measure for 
the abolition of purchase was one which he held it legiti- 
mate to resist, if only on grounds of legislative propriety and 
of due respect to a legislative body ; and when Mr. Glad- 
stone's imperious temper led him to reply to the rejection 
of the measure in the Lords by procuring the issue of a 
Royal Warrant giving effect to the proposed changes, Lord 
Salisbury was one of the most energetic supporters of the 
vote of censure upon the Government which was moved 
and carried in the Upper House by way of protest against so 
high-handed an appeal to the prerogative. In like manner 
he was to be found among those Peers who resented and 
foiled the endeavour to ' rush ' the Ballot Bill through the 
Upper House in the month of August. Nor did he shrink 
from facing the storm of Radical abuse which he knew 
would be showered on the Peers for insisting, even at the 
cost of a year's delay, on having due time allowed them to 
discuss a measure which had been nearly half a century 
before the House of Commons, and had been rejected by 
that branch of the Legislature no fewer than twenty-eight 
times. 

Meanwhile, save for these occasional assertions of prin- 
ciple, there was really little or nothing for an Opposition to 
do except, for the reason of the well-known adage, to give 
the Government ' plenty of rope.' From the first it had 
been a Ministry of 'all the talents' save those of tact and 



THE END APPROACHING II3 

discretion ; two or three of its most conspicuous members 
had applied themselves as industriously to making enemies 
for the Administration ever since their appointment as some 
men do to the work of making private friends ; and by the 
end of the session it was fast filling up the measure of its 
unpopularity. The defiant insolence with which Russia 
had been allowed to tear up the Black Sea Treaty in the 
face of its signatories, and the transparent pretence of Lord 
Granville's attempt to give an air of firmness to his sur- 
render, had disgusted even peace-loving Englishmen. 

Ministers had fallen generally into disfavour before the 
rising of Parliament in the autumn of 187 1, and the events of 
the recess that followed brought them into contempt as well. 
Two unlucky, and so far as one can judge, gratuitously 
devised and wantonly perpetrated jobs — the appointment 
of Sir Robert Collier, by an evasion of the terms of a 
statute, to a seat on the Judicial Committee of the Privy 
Council, and the presentation of Mr. Harvey, by a strictly 
analogous process, to the living of Ewelme — gave just 
offence to public opinion, and were vigorously attacked in 
both Houses of Parliament. The Government escaped a 
vote of censure, but they emerged from the conflict, not 
only with increased discredit in popular estimation, but 
sensibly weakened in their hold over their followers. 

The hours, in fact, were fast ' engendering of the day ' of 
Mr. Gladstone's downfall, and few probably of those who 
had correctly measured the difficulties of the task which he 
set himself in the following year, and the disadvantages of 
shaken prestige and authority under which he approached 
it, can have been surprised at his defeat over the Irish 
University Bill in 1873. This event was of course followed 
by the resignation of the Government, and a summons from 

I 



|I4 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

the Crown to the leader of the Opposition, who, however, 
legitimately and wisely declined the task of attempting to 
conduct the affairs of the country, with a minority behind 
him, in an exhausted Parliament, Mr. Gladstone and his 
colleagues resumed office on the tacit understanding that 
public business should be wound up as expeditiously as 
might be, and that the appeal to the constituencies should 
then be made. 

Another ten months were, however, to elapse before the 
dissolution. One morning in the month of January 1874 
there appeared a lengthy manifesto from the Prime Minister, 
stating briefly the reason for having advised her Majesty to 
dissolve Parliament, and setting forth with considerably 
greater fulness an array of reasons why the electorate should 
renew his lease of power. In spite, however, of the many 
words in which they were clothed, they were substantially 
only three in number, and consisted first of a bribe to the 
direct taxpayer, secondly of a bribe to the indirect tax- 
payer, and thirdly of a bribe to the local ratepayer. Mr. 
Gladstone anticipated a surplus of over five millions, and 
with this he promised that he would remit the income tax, 
'free the breakfast table,' and largely reduce the burden of 
local taxation. It was far and away the biggest money 
bribe ever offered by a political party in the State to the 
constituencies ; and it was the most decisively rejected. 
Mr. Gladstone went to the country with his hands full of 
gifts, and the country responded with a blow which laid 
him prostrate. The boldest bid ever made for success at 
a general election earned only the most crushing defeat 
that has overtaken any Minister of modern times. It was 
three-and-thirty years since the country had pronounced 
so decisively against any Liberal Government and so over- 



ANOTHER 1 84 1 115 

whelmingly in favour of their opponents. Never since 1841 
had the Conservatives returned from the polls with a 
working majority ; and their majority in 1874 was much 
more than a working majority : it was a commanding one. 
Ministers did not remain in office to meet its condemnation, 
but resigned as soon as the result of the election had 
declared itself. 



12 



Il6 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 



CHAPTER VIII 

The New Government — Again Secretary for India — The Bengal Famine 
— Lord Northbrook and Sir George Campbell— The Public Worship 
Regulation Bill — Opposed by Lord Salisbury in the Lords — Mr. 
Gladstone's Six Resolutions — The Prime Minister adopts the Bill — 
Sadducees and phylacteries — The Bill returned to the Lords — Lord 
Salisbury rebukes ' bluster ' — The Prime Minister on his colleague 
— A ' master of flouts and jeers ' — Sessions of 1875 ^^^ 1876. 

Rumour was, of course, busy during the few days imme- 
diately succeeding the resignation of the Government with 
the imaginary difi&culties which were being encountered by 
Mr. Disraeli in the attempt to carry out the Royal com- 
mands to form a new Administration. Six months before, 
when Mr. Gladstone's defeat on the Irish Education Bill 
had compelled him to place his resignation in her Majesty's 
hands, political gossips had been in a position to inform the 
world that it was Lord Derby, and not Mr. Disraeli, who 
would become his successor. Under the latter statesman, 
so these omniscient persons declared of their own know- 
ledge. Lords Salisbury and Carnarvon would inflexibly 
refuse to serve ; and as no worthy Conservative Cabinet 
could be formed without them, a compromise would 
have to be arranged by Mr. Disraeli's waiving his claims 
to the Premiership in favour of Lord Derby. As the 
Leader of the Opposition prayed to be excused from 
obedience to her Majesty's commands on that occasion, 
these political gobe-mouches were never exposed, and their 



THE BENGAL FAMINE II7 

'information' was now, of course, reproduced for a brief 
currency of some twenty-four hours. By the afternoon of 
the day following the summons of Mr. Disraeli to Windsor, 
he had already filled the principal places in his Cabinet, 
and it was officially known that Lord Salisbury would return 
to his old post at the India Office, and Lord Carnarvon 
again resume his administration of the Colonies. 

The moment was a critical one for the former of 
the two new Ministers, for before the end of the previous 
year it had become clear that a great famine was impending 
in India, and, to add to the difficulties of the Secretary of 
State, a grave difference of opinion on a vital point in the 
question as to the proper measures to be adopted for deal- 
ing with the calamity had already arisen between the 
Viceroy of India and the highest of the local administrators 
responsible to him. The Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, 
Sir George Campbell, whose name and opinion carried 
weight in those days, urged that the exportation of grain 
from India should be absolutely prohibited as long as the 
scarcity in Bengal lasted, and that the rice, which in ordinary 
circumstances would have found its way to European 
merchants, should be sent into the famine-stricken dis- 
tricts. Lord Northbrook, on the other hand, insisted that 
the export trade should continue as before, and that the 
Government should import rice into Bengal. Sir G. 
Campbell's plan he regarded as a dangerous interference 
with the freedom of trade, and as certain to injure, if not 
permanently to cripple, the grain trade of India. One need 
hardly say which of these two views would be the more 
likely to find favour with public sentiment, uninformed by 
economic insight, in this country, or to commend itself in 
consequence to a timid or popularity-hunting Minister. 



Il8 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

As a matter of fact, much pressure was put upon Lord 
Salisbury by the supporters of Sir George Campbell's con- 
tention, and it needed no little firmness on the part of the 
Secretary for India to stand stoutly by the sounder policy 
of the Viceroy. In his speech in its defence in the House of 
Lords — a speech which concluded with a generous tribute to 
the ability with which Lord Northbrook, a political opponent, 
had met the crisis — Lord Salisbury convincingly showed 
that, while from the financial point of view the difference 
between the two alternative courses was scarcely worth 
considering, from the administrative point of view it was 
all-important. The export of grain would not imperil the 
supply for the distressed districts because there was a large 
surplus crop in some parts of Bengal, and the difficulty had 
been, not to procure grain, but to bring the supplies to the 
homes of the starving population. On the other hand, 
an official prohibition of exports would have paralysed 
private trade, and, by causing private traders to abandon the 
idea of attempting the conveyance of grain on their own 
account to these parts of the country, would have tended 
to aggravate a real famine by an artificial one. The 
wise and courageous course thus adopted by the Secretary 
for India was crowned with complete success. The 
impending scarcity turned out to the full as serious as 
those best acquainted with the country had expected ; but 
the preparations for dealing with it proved thoroughly 
effective, and the dreaded visitation passed off without 
even so much as causing any increase in the death-rate of 
Bengal. 

As regards domestic affairs, the session of 1874 bade 
fair at first to be of an absolutely uneventful character. A 
year which begins with a dissolution, followed by a com- 



A MODEST PROGRAMME II9 

plete turn of the political tables and the elevation of a 
weak Opposition to power at the head of an overwhelming 
majority is not usually marked by any other very important or 
exciting political incidents. After such a somersault, parties 
naturally require some little time to recover their breath, 
and they usually spend the session that follows in awaiting 
the gradual subsidence of the rate of respiration to a normal 
point. Nor is there any reason to suppose that when the 
new Parliament of 1874 adjourned on the night of March 19, 
after listening to the Speech from the Throne, there was 
expectation in any quarter. Ministerial or other, of a 
departure from this precedent. The Government set before 
the House a very modest bill of legislative fare. An amend- 
ment of the system of Land Transfer, a Royal Commission 
on the Law of Master and Servant, of Conspiracy, and 
of Trade Offences, an extension of the Judicature Reform 
to Ireland, and a Friendly Societies Bill— of these and 
other like measures did the programme consist. 

No one suspected that the session would be rendered 
one cannot exactly say memorable, but certainly remarkable, 
by a piece of legislative work at once so irritating and so 
impotent as to send us back nearly a quarter of a century 
for its parallel, and one attended by passages of Parliamen- 
tary history so curious that we have to extend our retrospect 
for yet another hundred years and more to find their pre- 
cedents. A measure as gratuitously introduced — or at least, 
as needlessly adopted by the Government — as noisily and in- 
temperately supported, and almost as void of result as the 
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, was passed through the House of 
Commons in a series of debates which seem to transport 
us to the days when Ministers, sitting side by side on the 
Treasury Bench, were in the habit of rising to denounce 



120 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

each other's policy to an assembly to whom such an incident 
appeared the most natural thing in the world. 

Yet nobody anticipated either the Ministerial patron- 
age of the measure, or the strange accompaniments of its 
passage, when, on April 20, the Archbishop of Canterbury 
introduced the Public Worship Regulation Bill. One may 
perhaps, without much rashness, venture a little further and 
say that even when that measure had been read a third time 
in the Upper, and sent down to the Lower, House the 
anticipation of such a future for it had not yet dawned. For 
it is no very hazardous assumption that if Mr. Gladstone 
had not attacked it — or even if he had only attacked it on 
principles which were a less direct challenge to the 
'Protestantism of the Protestant religion' — Mr. Disraeli 
would never have stood forth as its uncompromising 
champion, still less have identified his Government with 
its Parliamentary fortunes, least of all espoused its cause in 
language which gave such deep offence to a large body of 
Conservative Churchmen. 

In the House of Lords a division of Ministerial opinion 
with regard to the merits of the Bill had already disclosed 
itself. The Duke of Richmond had supported it, and the 
Chancellor had joined Lord Shaftesbury and the two Arch- 
bishops in ' screwing up ' the measure by the substitution of 
a lay for an ecclesiastical judge, and generally rendering it 
more distasteful, not to Ritualists alone, but even to mode- 
rate High Churchmen. On the other hand, it had been 
opposed by Lord Salisbury on the second reading in a 
speech of statesmanlike breadth and moderation, and one 
which displayed a far sounder view of the true attitude to be 
adopted by the State towards a Church of such a constitu- 
tion and with such a history as ours than that which his 



THE THREE SCHOOLS IN THE CHURCH I2t 

leader was afterwards to proclaim. The three schools which 
exist within the Anglican Communion— the High, the Low, 
and the Broad, or, as Lord Salisbury preferred to style 
them, the Sacramental, the Emotional, and the Philosophical 
— have, he pointed out, been found, except when one or 
other of them has been temporarily crushed by the strong 
hand of power, in the Church in every age : 

They arise (he continued) not from any difference in the 
truth itself, but because the truth must necessarily assume 
different tints as it is refracted through the media of different 
minds. But it is upon the frank and loyal toleration of these 
schools that the existence of your EstabHshment depends. The 
problem you have to solve is how to repress personal and indi- 
vidual eccentricities if you will, how to repress all exhibitions 
of wilfulness, of lawlessness, of caprice ; but at the same time 
that you do that you must carefully guard any measures which 
you introduce from injuring the consciences or suppressing the 
rights of either of the three schools of which the Church consists. 
On this condition alone can your legislation be safe. If you 
accomplish this end, if you solve this problem, no doubt you 
will remove causes of irritation, and conciliate many hearts and 
minds to the Church which are now alienated, and you will have 
done a good work. But if you legislate without solving the 
problem ; if you disregard this condition ; if you attempt to 
drive from the Church of England any one of the parties of 
which it is composed ; if you tamper with the spirit of toleration 
of which she is the embodiment, you will produce a convulsion 
in the Church and imperil the interests of the State itself. 

The House of Lords, however, which is just as liable on 
occasion to attacks of the No Popery fever as the popular 
assembly, was deaf to this wise and eloquent appeal. The 
Bill was read a second time, ' screwed up ' as aforesaid in 
Committee— not to 'concert,' but to 'discord pitch' — and 
was ultimately sent down to the House of Commons early 



122 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

in July. On the 9th of that month the second reading was 
moved by Mr. Russell Gurney, and was opposed by Mr. 
Gladstone in an impassioned speech, at the conclusion of 
which he laid on the table six resolutions which he thought 
should form the basis of any legislation on the subject. 
They were such as to supply a watchful opponent with a 
plausible excuse for appealing to the strong and in many 
respects the just and reasonable English jealousy of eccle- 
siastical encroachment on the authority of the State. It 
was not likely that such a chance would escape Mr. Disraeli, 
and upon this hint he spake. Without a moment's hesita- 
tion, he stepped to the front, and undertook the patronage 
of the Bill. The debate was adjourned, and on the next 
Government night the Prime Minister stated that Mr. Glad- 
stone's resolutions, directly raising, as he declared they did, 
the question of the entire emancipation of the Church from 
State control, must be regarded as a challenge which the 
Government was bound to take up, and that every facility 
would consequently be given for the discussion of the Bill. 
On the following Wednesday — the standing orders 
having been suspended to allow the debate to proceed 
on that day — a singular scene occurred. Mr. Hardy, the 
Secretary of State for War, speaking from his usual place on 
the Treasury Bench, energetically attacked the measure, and 
later on the same afternoon his chief announced his inten- 
tion of giving it his hearty support. After describing the 
three parties in the Church, whose respective characteristics 
he defined — with considerably less precision, especially as 
regards the second of them, than Lord Salisbury — as Cere- 
mony, Enthusiasm, and Free Speculation, and declaring 
that no attack was contemplated upon any of them, he 
went on to use the long-remembered and resented words : 



*T0 PUT DOWN RITUALISM' 123 

' I take the primary object of the Bill, whose powers, if it 
be enacted, will be applied and extended impartially to all 
subjects of her Majesty, to be this — to put down Ritualism.' 
Going on to comment upon Mr. Gladstone's declaration 
that he did not know what Ritualism was, the Prime 
Minister declared that that ignorance was not shared by 
the House of Commons or the country. What the House 
of Commons and the country understood by Ritualism were 
practices by a portion of the clergy avowedly symbolic of 
doctrines which the same clergy are bound in the most 
solemn manner to refute and repudiate. ' Therefore I 
think there can be no mistake among practical men as to 
what is meant when we say that it is our desire to discourage 
Ritualism.' 

The statesmanship of the course adopted on this occa- 
sion by Mr. DisraeU has often been, and is to this day, ques- 
tioned ; but of its immediate popularity with most members 
of his party and of its consonance with the temper of the 
House of Commons, there can be no doubt. Its success 
was also greatly assisted by the general political stagnation 
of the period and the consequent eagerness wherewith the 
question was seized upon by the press, which, of course, in 
most instances took the popular — that is, the ' Protestant ' — 
side. To journalists, moreover, as to certain distinguished 
members of Parliament, the subject had for a time, at any 
rate, all the charm of the unfamiliar, and they experienced 
something of that pleasure which must have attended Sir 
William Harcourt in his excursions among the Canonists. 
The learning, not to say the unction, with which they dis- 
coursed daily on ritual observances, and sometimes even on 
theological mysteries, was most edifying. It was remarked 
with caustic wit by the ' Spectator ' that ' the newspapers, 



124 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

written principally by Sadducees,' were 'hot with discus- 
sions on phylacteries.' The jealous Erastianism of Parlia- 
ment and the alarmed Protestantism of Fleet Street acted 
and reacted upon each other, and the Public Worship Bill 
was converted into a more efficient instrument, or what was 
intended and supposed to be a more efficient instrument, 
for the putting down of Ritualism. 

An amendment, giving complainants an appeal to the 
archbishop where the bishop refused to act — or, in other 
words, an amendment removing what the minority considered 
to be the only safeguard against an abuse of the powers of 
the Bill — was carried against the opposition of Mr. Glad- 
stone, and, thus ' strengthened,' the measure was sent back 
to the Upper House. Here Lord Salisbury, in a well- 
remembered speech, which was misunderstood at the time, 
and has often been both honestly and dishonestly misrepre- 
sented since, recommended that the new clause should be 
struck out. 'Much,' he observed, 'has been said of the 
majority in another place, and of the peril in which the Bill 
would be if the clause under discussion is rejected. There 
is a great deal of that kind of bluster when any particular 
course has been taken in the other House of Parliament. 
But it should be borne in mind that the majority was only 
twenty-three, and that those who are most interested in sup- 
porting the amendment are the very persons who, above all 
things, desire that the Bill shall pass. It is absurd, then, to 
suppose that if the clause be rejected, there will not be 
found twelve men among them with sufficient common 
sense to accept the Bill without it rather than lose it 
altogether.' 

This shrewd calculation was verified by the event ; for 
the Commons, after a debate enlivened by more than one 



*A MASTER OF FLOUTS AND, JEERS ' I25 

remarkable incident, agreed to the Lords' amendment, thus 
submitting to the elision of the obnoxious clause ; and the 
Bill became law, with the ' Bishop's veto ' left absolute. But 
Lord Salisbury was taken severely to task for the impropriety 
of his assumed reference to the House of Commons by Sir 
William Harcourt, who described and deplored his language 
as the ' ill-advised raillery of a rash and rancorous tongue.' 
It was in reply to this speech that Mr. Disraeli made his 
famous reference to his colleague as ' not a man who mea- 
sures his phrases,' but as 'one who is a great master of 
gibes and flouts and jeers ' ; and putting the same con- 
struction upon the reference to ' bluster ' as Sir William 
Harcourt had done, the Premier went on, in his half-serious, 
half-ironic manner, to ascribe to Lord Salisbury a deliberate 
intention of irritating his adversaries into a false move. ' My 
noble friend,' said Mr. Disraeli, ' knows the House of 
Commons well, and he is not, perhaps, superior to the con- 
sideration that by making a speech of that kind, and taunting 
respectable men like ourselves with being a blustering 
majority, he probably might stimulate the amour propre of 
some individuals to take the course which he wants and to 
defeat the Bill.' 

This, of course, was a very free paraphrase of the precise 
words of Lord Salisbury, who not only had never used the 
expression 'a blustering majority,' but, as he hastened to 
explain the following day, had not even had that particular 
majority in his mind. The ' bluster ' against which he pro- 
tested was in the Upper and not the Lower House. It 
had been argued, he said, by one of the members of the 
former assembly, ' that we were bound to take a particular 
course because the House of Commons were very resolved, 
and because, if we did not take that course, the Bill would 



126 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

be lost. My Lords, I have always objected to the argument 
when there is a difference of opinion between the two 
Houses, that it is the privilege of the House of Commons 
always to insist, and the duty of the House of Lords always 
to yield. It is not uncommon to use that argument when 
we come to the last discussions in conflicts of that kind, and 
I venture to think it is an argument of a nature which may 
be justly designated by the term " bluster." But whether 
that be the case or not, what I am now concerned to say is, 
that it never entered my head to use a term in the least 
degree disrespectful to the other House of Parliament. I 
regret that the statement should have been made, because I 
should exceedingly dislike to have it attached to my name, 
and by such distinguished authorities, or to have it thought 
that I could be guilty of such an offence at all.' 

This explanation, at once spirited and courteous, of course 
closed the incident in its public aspect. And in further 
making it clear that Mr. Disraeli's somewhat pungent retort 
upon his colleague's former speech had been delivered under 
a misapprehension of its import, Lord Salisbury might have 
reasonably reckoned on satisfying the curious that the pas- 
sage of arms between his chief and himself — if, indeed, a 
single thrust, dexterously parried, but not 'riposted,' can 
be so described — had left no coolness behind it. It would 
seem, however, that stupidity and malevolence were 
not convinced of this until after the Prime Minister had 
publicly complimented his colleague at a Lord Mayor's 
dinner on the ability of his Indian administration. So much 
for the piquant episode which has rescued the Parliamentary 
history of one of the most pretentiously and irritatingly 
futile pieces of modern legislation from otherwise well- 
merited oblivion. 



'MAN proposes' 12/ 

The subsequent history of this Parliament and Adminis- 
tration forms the most eloquent of sermons on the text of 
'Man proposes.' Ministers, as Lord Salisbury told the 
Upper House in 1875, ^^ ^^^ course of a trenchant reply 
to an attack from Lord Granville upon the unambitious 
character of their programme, looked forward to a period of 
comparative political tranquillity during which the country 
might have rest from the ' harassing legislation ' with which 
it had been agitated by their predecessors, and Parliament 
might devote itself to the consideration of measures of the 
socially useful rather than of the politically heroic order. 
Far was it from entering into the minds, either of the Go- 
vernment or the Opposition, to anticipate that events abroad 
were destined to take such a course as to thrust all questions 
of domestic policy into the background, and to bring the 
career of the Parliament of 1874, and the Government there- 
with associated, to its close through as stormy a period of 
three years as has occurred in the lifetime of the present 
generation. 

For a session or two the fair promise of the political 
situation was maintained. Throughout the year 1875 ^""^ 
until the autumn of 1876, it appeared as if the Government 
were destined to live out their official lives in peace. The 
harvest of legislation in the former year was fairly plentiful, 
and was reaped without any excessive toil. Such measures 
as the Agricultural Holdings Act, the Land Transfer Act, the 
Artisans' Dwellings Act, and the Acts for the consolidation 
of the law of public health, and for the amendment of the 
law of conspiracy in connection with trade offences, had, of 
course, to encounter the sneer of the Radicals on the score 
of their ' permissive,' or, as was alleged, their otherwise in- 
effective character ; but those who sneered at them did 



128 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

not care to risk the unpopularity of opposing them, and if 
some of them have disappointed their authors, others have 
proved valuable contributions to the statute book. In other 
matters, too, as well as these, the failure of the Opposition to 
find any available means of seriously damaging the Govern- 
ment became more and more conspicuous every day. The 
factious and factitious outcry against the Royal Titles Bill, 
and the desperate endeavour to make political capital out 
of the imaginary wrongs of the Gaikwar of Baroda — who, in 
spite of his easily explained acquittal by a curious Mixed 
Commission of EngHsh officials and Indian native princes on 
a charge of attempting the murder of the British Resident, 
was legitimately and most wisely deposed by the Secretary 
for India— spoke volumes as to the desperate straits to which 
the constitutional critics of the Government were reduced. 

It looked as if they might have whistled for a wind for 
ever, and in vain ; and, so far as home politics were con- 
cerned, perhaps they might. But in the meantime, and while 
even the most sanguine weather prophets of the Opposition 
were beginning to despair of the desired gale, a breeze was 
rising in an obscure corner of South-eastern Europe, which 
was destined to fill their sails to their hearts' content, and 
which for a moment threatened to wreck the vessel of their 
adversaries. 



129 



CHAPTER IX 

The Eastern Question — Differences of English opinion thereon — The 
views of the Government — Lord Salisbury's mission to Constanti- 
nople — His policy and that of his colleagues — The preliminary 
sittings — The Conference^Obstinacy of the Turks — A final appeal 
— Returns to London — Lord Beaconsfield's defence. 

The story of the three momentous years 1876-78 has been 
often told, and it does not fall within the purpose of this 
work to rehearse it — or at any rate its earlier chapters — in 
anything like fulness of detail. During the first few stages 
of that prolonged crisis, as one may without exaggeration 
call it, which began with the trouble in the Herzegovina in 
the summer of 1875, ^"d ended, so far as Europe was con- 
cerned, with the conclusion of the Treaty of Berlin in July 
1878, Lord Salisbury's public part in foreign affairs was in 
no way more conspicuous than that of the majority of his 
colleagues. The main burden of our foreign policy rested 
of course during these months on the shoulders of the 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ; and though Lord 
Salisbury, as chief of the India Office, may well have watched 
the course of events in Eastern Europe with more than 
ordinary Ministerial concern, it had not as yet become his 
duty to take any special measures for the protection of our 
great Asiatic dependency against the consequences or 
incidents of the attack which Russia was preparing to make 
upon the head of the Mahommedan faith. It was not until 

K 



130 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

after the excesses committed by the Turkish irregulars in 
the suppression of a Bulgarian rising had led to a violent 
agitation in England, and Russia had been encouraged, by 
the consequent estrangement of English sympathies from the 
cause of Turkey, to intervene in the struggle between the 
Porte and the Principality of Servia, that Lord Salisbury was 
summoned to take a prominent part in the negotiations 
which thereupon ensued. 

On October 31 the Russian Government sent an ulti- 
matum to the Porte demanding its immediate assent to an 
armistice in the war with Servia, and threatening, in the 
event of refusal, to withdraw its representative from Con- 
stantinople. With this demand the Sultan and his advisers 
at once complied, and the British Government there- 
upon proposed to the Powers that a European Conference 
should at once assemble at Constantinople and endeavour 
to settle with Turkey the terms of an arrangement for 
the pacification of the disturbed territories within and upon 
her borders. And at the Guildhall Banquet of November 9, 
Lord Beaconsfield announced in a memorable speech that 
the Powers had assented to the proposal, and that Lofd 
Salisbury would attend the Conference as the representative 
of this country. 

The crisis had by this time become acute, and many 
English observers, not being either partisans in home 
politics or dominated by their sympathies with Russia on the 
one hand or Turkey on the other, were already beginning 
to suspect that war was inevitable. Many of those who had 
honestly lost their heads over the ' Bulgarian atrocities ' were 
by this time in a way to recover them ; but though they 
were thereby enabled to take a calmer and truer view of the 
policy of Russia than in those impassioned moments when 



STATE OF ENGLISH OPINION I31 

the most corrupt and barbarous of Christian States had 
appeared to them in the hght of a righteously indignant 
Power inspired only by a holy wrath against oppression and 
cruelty, the opening of their eyes did but disclose to them a 
still darker prospect for the peace of Europe. They were now 
forced to admit that if Russia, considered as a disinterested 
crusader on behalf of humanity, had been likely to attack 
Turkey, a descent of Russia, regarded as a calculating 
aggressor in quest of increased territory, upon her neighbour 
was still more to be feared. For in the latter case, modera- 
tion and even meekness on the part of the intended victim 
would obviously fail to avert attack, and, supposing the 
victim to suspect the design upon him, would be far less 
likely to be displayed. In other words, if Russia meant 
war on one pretext or another, which seemed daily growing 
more and more probable, and if Turkey knew that she 
meant it, which to say the least of it was far from improb- 
able, a European Conference would be idle. The two 
contending Powers would simply join in it for their own 
purposes, and would be merely awaiting the completion 
of their preparations to break it off. 

While, however, this desponding view was generally 
gaining ground among Englishmen, their agreement for the 
most part ended here. From any half-dozen men who 
concurred in thinking that before many months were over 
there would be war between Russia and Turkey, it was often 
possible to collect at least half as many different opinions as 
to the way in which such a war would affect British interests, 
and as to the policy which, in consequence, it behoved us to 
pursue. There were a few extreme partisans on either side 
who held respectively that England was absolutely un- 
concerned with the fate of the Ottoman Empire, and that 



r32 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

its ' integrity and independence ' in the strictest sense of the 
word, ought, on mere grounds of self-preservation, to be 
defended by force of arms against attack. And ranging 
between these two extremes, there were those who agreed in 
thinking that in certain given conditions of danger to the 
existence of the Turkish Empire, intervention for its protec- 
tion might be imperatively demanded by British interests, 
but who held indefinitely varying views, both as to the point 
at which that demand would arise and the particular steps 
by which it should be met. 

That these differences of opinion were reflected in Lord 
Beaconsfield's Cabinet is likely enough ; indeed, we know 
by the evidence of subsequent facts that two Ministers 
differed not only from their colleagues to the point of resig- 
nation, but from each other on the last of the questions 
above referred to. But reviewing matters from the stand- 
point of the present day, it seems but reasonable to believe 
that the dissensions of the Cabinet were both antedated 
and exaggerated by public rumour. It is doubtful whether, 
in spite of all the gossip current in those days, there was 
much divergence even of sympathies among them, but there 
is anyhow no solid ground for believing that at this particu- 
lar juncture, or indeed for more than a year to come 
there was any material disagreement among them as to the 
proper lines of British policy. The saying of the Foreign 
Secretary, that ' the greatest of British interests was peace,' 
commanded, we may be sure, an equally hearty assent from 
all his colleagues alike. No doubt their modes of ' seeking 
peace and ensuing it ' varied with their respective tempera- 
ments, and one Minister may have entertained as strong 
a belief in the salutary effect of ' firm ' language as others 
did in the efficacy of conciliatory utterances. 



LORD BEACONSFIELD AND HIS COLLEAGUES 1 33 

Adequate, however, as was this explanation of the differ- 
ences occasionally noticeable between the speech and 
attitude of one member of the Cabinet and another, its 
adequacy was not admitted and indeed not recognised by 
the deeply interested and somewhat excited public opinion 
of the time. The belief prevailed in many minds that 
as early as the autumn of 1876 Lord Beaconsfield and 
certain of his colleagues were pulling opposite ways : that the 
Prime Minister, in obedience to his ' Semitic instincts,' was 
bent upon dragging England into a war for the mainte- 
nance of the ' integrity and independence of the Ottoman 
Empire ' in the fullest and oldest-fashioned sense of the 
phrase ; and that the more ' English ' and more prudent 
members of his Cabinet were straining every nerve in op- 
position to the rash policy of their chief. This idea found 
favour, as it happened, in two quite opposite quarters, and in 
both the wish was father to the thought. Turcophil Tories 
and Russophil Radicals alike hoped that it might be true — 
the former because its realisation would to their thinking 
demonstrate the political genius and patriotism of the Prime 
Minister ; the latter because it would, as they thought, justify 
their severest denunciations of his wickedness. To each of 
them in short the statesman who was supposed to regard 
British interests as bound up with those of the people whom 
the Radical, described as the ' Unspeakable,' and the Tory 
as ' Our Ancient Ally,' was the Beaconsfield of their imagi- 
nation. Such a conception satisfied, on opposite moral 
grounds, their respective ideals, and they vied with each 
other in the endeavour to popularise it. 

Lord Salisbury's appointment was first pubHcly an- 
nounced, as has been said, at the Guildhall Banquet, and 
the speech in which the announcement was made contained 



134 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

the famous, reference to the ' resources ' of England, as a 
country which would have no need to ' inquire whether she 
could enter into a second or a third campaign.' The effect 
of this flourish was exactly what might have been anticipated. 
' Magnificent ! ' exclaimed the ' Jingo,' and ' Monstrous ! ' 
echoed his opponents. ' The Prime Minister,' said the 
former, 'is with equal spirit and judgment notifying to 
Russia that England is not going into the Conference to 
ratify a Three Emperors' scheme for the partition of Turkey, 
but to uphold the treaty law of Europe.' ' Lord Beacons- 
field,' cried the latter, ' is bent on reassuring his friends at 
Constantinople as to the import of English assent to the 
Conference. For fear they should mistake him for a serious 
supporter of the just demands of Europe, he takes this 
means of telling them that, if they reject those demands, 
they will be backed by England.' 

Yet the two sets of critics who thus substantially con- 
curred in their description of Lord Beaconsfield's admir- 
able or detestable designs at Constantinople agreed also, 
curiously enough, in believing that he had made the worst 
possible choice of an instrument. The friends of the Turk 
shook solemn heads over the selection of Lord Salisbury to 
represent her Majesty's Government at the Conference; 
Mr. Gladstone effusively welcomed it at the St James's 
Hall meeting, whereat, of course, the heads shook the 
more. How the legend of Lord Salisbury's antagonism 
to the policy of the Prime Minister arose and gained 
ground it is somewhat difficult to say. Partly, no doubt, it 
was due to a belief, dating from the days of the Reform Bill, 
and revived — absurdly enough, it is true — by more recent 
incidents, that the two statesmen failed to ' see eye to eye ' 
on most subjects, and that, if Lord Beaconsfield's sym- 



A MUCH DEBATED APPOINTMENT 1 35 

pathies were strongly Turkish, it might be fairly assumed 
that Lord Salisbury's would set in the opposite direction. 
But in addition to this, it was with much seriousness re- 
marked that Lord Salisbury was a High Anglican, and that 
some High Anglicans were enthusiastic partisans of the 
Eastern Christian communities : wherefrom the conclusion 
that Lord Salisbury was himself an enthusiastic partisan 
of these interesting races was driven home with all the 
poignant force of a syllogism barbed with an ' undistributed 
middle.' 

His selection by the Prime Minister to thwart 'the 
policy of Lord Beaconsfield ' was not, to be sure, a step 
which exactly explained itself. Nevertheless, a plausible 
explanation of it was not beyond the resources of the quid- 
nunifs ingenuity. It was the result of a 'compromise,' abso- 
lutely necessary (' I assure you ') to prevent a break-up of 
the Cabinet. Lord Salisbury, indeed, threatened (' I have it 
on the best authority ') to resign if he were not sent to Con- 
stantinople, and Lord Beaconsfield had to give way. The 
ultimate arrangement of the matter was that Lord Derby (a 
prudent and humane statesman if left to himself, but ' hypno- 
tised ' by the Prime Minister, according to the Radicals of 
that day, into a mere tool of 'Semitic' policy) should furnish 
Lord Salisbury with instructions framed as far as possible 
in the interests of the Turkish Government, and that Lord 
Salisbury should then go to Constantinople, and proceed to 
interpret and act upon these instructions as far as possible 
in the interests of the rebellious Christian subjects of the 
Porte. Of course, observed the 'Daily News' cheerfully, 
' Lord Salisbury is in theory subordinate to the Cabinet and 
to the Foreign Minister, from whom he receives his instruc- 
tions 3 but in such cases as these the stronger will has a 



136 ' THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

faculty of dictating the orders which it is to obey.' The 
anti-Russian party in this country were naturally indignant, 
both at the cool assumption that her Majesty's representative 
would thus play his colleagues false, and at the anticipatory 
approval of his assumed perfidy ; but there is reason to think 
that a certain number of people among us rather admired 
the supposed arrangement as an illustration of the ' national 
genius for compromise.' 

The suspicions of the one party and the self-congratula- 
tions of the other were confirmed by the conduct of the 
British delegate. Before going to Constantinople, Lord 
Salisbury paid visits to Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Rome. 
Why ? Was not the Eastern question more our own con- 
cern than that of any other European State ? Was not 
England ' the greatest Mahommedan Power,' and could it 
be doubted that Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Derby (under 
hypnotic influence) had instructed the Secretary of State for 
India to inform the Conference that England intended to 
'behave as such?' Why, then, it was indignantly asked by 
the more ardent advocates of the theory that British interests 
were bound up with the ' integrity and independence of the 
Ottoman Empire' — why, then, should an English Minister 
go, ' cap in hand,' to Prince Bismarck or Count Andrassy, 
or any other Continental minister, to learn his views, instead 
of walking straight into the Conference Chamber and flinging 
down a British ultimatum on the council table ? What 
could it mean, asked politicians of this school (and 
their Radical adversaries chuckled as they echoed, ' What, 
indeed?'), except that Lord Salisbury was arranging with 
the enemies of the Turk for compelling him to surrender ? 

On the arrival of the British Plenipotentiary at Constan- 
tinople, matters became worse and worse. For not only 



THE TWO DELEGATES 1 37 

did he make the acquaintance of the Russian representative, 
General Ignatieff, but his relations with that ' sweet enemy ' 
became so unpatriotically friendly that the two delegates 
were actually seen walking arm-in-arm with each other in 
the streets of Pera ! It was impossible to conceal so 
compromising an incident from the watchful eye of ' our 
own correspondent' at Constantinople. He reported it 
to his employers at home ; it was duly and gravely chroni- 
cled in the daily press ; and hands of holy horror were held 
up at it by solemn instructors of the public, whose por- 
tentous consciousness of ' statesmanlike ' responsibility had 
deadened their native sense of the ridiculous. They might 
at least have remembered their Dickens, and, recalling 
the familiarities exchanged between the two eminent advo- 
cates portrayed by the great humourist, have refrained 
from such a display of the somewhat fatuous simplicity of 
Mr. Pickwick. 

In justice, however, to these able and at that time 
influential writers, it is only fair to admit that the series of 
events which followed supplied them with some excuse for 
misconception. The text of Lord Salisbury's instructions 
was of course unpublished, and therefore unknown to the 
English public until after the dissolution of the Conference ; 
but its general tenor was no secret, and it soon became 
apparent to jealous observers of the course of the nego- 
tiations at Constantinople that the ' English proposals,' as 
they were called, were undergoing modification, and as- 
suming a more exacting shape as against Turkey before 
being submitted to the Porte at all. Thus, although it had 
been understood that the English Government had been 
especially urgent in insisting — against, as was believed, the 
wish of Russia — that representatives of the Porte should 



138 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

assist at the Conference, a series of preliminary sittings 
were held from which Turkey was excluded. 

Not only so, complained a hostile newspaper critic, 
but it was these meetings which constituted the Con- 
ference in the only true sense of the word ; and ' the re- 
presentatives of the Porte were subsequently admitted not 
so much to confer with the European delegates as to be 
informed of their decision.' ' Moreover,' proceeds the same 
indignant writer, the 'proceedings at the "Preliminary 
Conference " amounted to a breach of faith, an infringement 
of the conditions upon which Turkey had consented to a 
Conference. Not only did the delegates of the Powers take 
upon themselves to discuss the " English proposals " in the 
absence of Turkish representatives, but they stepped 
beyond the limits there prescribed, and in effect discussed, 
formulated, and settled a different programme of their own. 
A comparison of the proposal of the European delegates 
with the programme so carefully drawn up by Lord Derby 
will show how wide was the departure from the terms upon 
which the Conference was supposed to have met. The 
English programme proposed peace with Servia on the 
basis " in general terms " of the status quo : yet at the first 
sitting of the plenary Conference the Porte was called upon 
to grant an accession of territory to the conquered country. 
The programme expressly affirmed the "independence" of 
the Ottoman Empire ; but the Conference began by 
submitting proposals which would have handed over the 
fiscal and judicial system of Turkey to the control of 
foreigners. The programme, while suggesting a system of 
local self-government, made no mention of any foreign 
guarantees for these administrative reforms, or indeed of 
any guarantees whatever, other than those inherent in the 



PRELIMINARY MEETINGS 1 39 

scheme of administration itself, but the Turkish plenipoten- 
tiaries found themselves confronted on their admission with 
the proposal to admit a corps of Belgian gendannerie to 
Ottoman territory.' 

This account of matters is exact enough, albeit from a 
hostile hand ; and though the question ' How did these 
extraordinary changes come about ? ' is answered perversely 
enough by the writer with the suggestion that it was ' the 
result of a conversation between Lord Salisbury and 
General Ignatieff,' there is no denying that the change may 
well have seemed ' extraordinary ' enough at the time to 
English onlookers, especially to those who started with the 
preconceived notion that Lord Beaconsfield and Lord 
Derby (mysteriously subjugated by him) were interposing 
the shield of English diplomacy — with the sword of English 
power in the background — between Turkey and the aggres- 
sive designs of her hereditary enemy. It required the 
evidence of Blue Books — if, indeed, even that was sufficient 
— to convince these suspicious bystanders that the British 
delegate at the Conference of Constantinople was in com- 
plete accord throughout with his colleagues at home ; and 
that if in the preliminary sittings of the delegates he con- 
sented to enlarge the scope and increase the stringency 
of the original English demands upon the Porte, he did so 
in pursuance of a policy upon which the Cabinet were for 
the time being entirely at one. 

For at this juncture of events they were no doubt one 
and all, from Lord Beaconsfield downwards, convinced of 
two things : first, that the English people were not prepared, 
at any rate in the first instance, to take up arms in defence 
of ' the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire ' ; 
and secondly, that at the stage which matters had then 



140 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

reached a Russian attack upon Turkey was only to be 
averted, if at all, by coming to an agreement with Russia as 
to the terms of settlement to be proposed at Constantinople, 
and then bringing all possible pressure to bear upon the 
Porte to procure its compliance with them. And to the 
attainment of this end there is every reason to beheve that 
Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Salisbury, Lord Derby, and, in 
fact, the entire Cabinet energetically and loyally co-operated. 
On this view of the policy and purposes of the British 
Government the course pursued by our representative at 
Constantinople, however unsatisfactory it may have appeared 
to a certain school of politicians in this country, becomes of 
course intelligible. It was plain that a thorough under- 
standing with Russia must precede any attempt to exert 
influence upon Turkey. The demands of the former Power 
required to be brought into conformity with the will of 
Europe, and to be sustained by the approval of the Euro- 
pean concert, before there could be any use in presenting 
them to the latter Power. 

Nor was the contemplated result arrived at by a mere 
process of concession to Russian pretensions. On the con- 
trary, there were waivers on both sides. The adverse critics 
above quoted were unaware at the time that the ' English 
proposals ' of settlement had not, and never had had, the 
field to themselves. There were Russian proposals, and 
those of a somewhat formidable kind, before the Powers 
also. At the end of the previous September, Count 
Schouvaloff had proposed to Lord Derby that if the Porte 
refused the conditions of peace with Servia which England 
was then putting forward, a simultaneous coercive move- 
ment on the part of all the Powers should be made at 
once. This movement, it was suggested, should consist. 



THE IRREDUCIBLE MINIMUM 141 

firstly, of the occupation of Bosnia by an Austrian force ; 
secondly, of the occupation of Bulgaria by a Russian Army ; 
and thirdly, of the entrance into the Bosphorus of the 
united fleets of Europe. The Czar, however, was ready, it 
was added, to drop the first two suggestions, and to regard 
the entrance of the fleet into the Bosphorus as sufficient. 

One of Lord Salisbury's first steps on arriving at Con- 
stantinople was to inform General Ignatieff that he was 
instructed to oppose any scheme of military occupation ; 
to which the Russian representative at once replied that 
his Government had no intention of insisting on their 
proposal. By this concession he no doubt did something 
to predispose his British colleague in favour of the project 
which he submitted in substitution for that which had been 
thus abandoned. Anyhow, the Preliminary Conference was 
not long in arriving at the conclusion that some sort of 
occupation of Turkish territory by the troops of some 
European Power or other would become necessary, and 
Lord Salisbury communicated in this sense with the 
Government at home. They assented to the proposal ; 
and it was finally agreed among the plenipotentiaries 
in private council that the 'irreducible minimum' of 
demands to be made by the Powers upon Turkey should 
include the exaction of her consent to the establishment 
of an International Commission to reorganise Bulgaria, 
with the support, as aforesaid, of six thousand troops to be 
supplied by Belgium or some other minor State. 

Thus it will be seen that the partisan gossip of the day 
was entirely misleading and misled, and that, at any rate 
at this stage of the Eastern difficulty, the Beaconsfield Ad- 
ministration were in complete accord in holding that war 
was only to be averted by liberal, even perilously liberal. 



142 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

concessions on the part of Turkey to her hereditary enemy 
and secular despoiler ; that it was better for Europe that 
these perils should be risked by the Porte than that a great 
European war should be allowed to break out ; and that 
England therefore should co-operate ex animo with the 
other great Powers in endeavouring to press this view of 
the matter on the Sultan and his advisers. The weak 
point in the policy, as the British plenipotentiary no doubt 
perceived as clearly as anyone, was that there was nothing 
in it to recommend it to the Porte in preference to facing 
that alternative of war which we and other European 
Powers happened to regard from our own points of view as 
so manifestly ineligible. 

Nor was it long before this weak point betrayed itself. 
With the trifling exception of the assent of Turkey thereto, 
the arrangement was complete ; but upon the Preliminary 
Conference converting itself into a Plenary Conference by the 
addition of the representatives of the Porte, it was discovered 
that this assent was not to be had on any terms. It was in 
vain that, with a bluntness which alarmed and scandalised 
EngHsh critics of like mind with those above quoted. Lord 
Salisbury urged upon the Sultan's chief minister, Midhat 
Pasha, the dire necessities of his master's situation. It was 
in vain that he pointed out to him how serious for the Sultan 
was the danger of rejecting the demands of Europe, and, on 
the other hand, how much exaggerated was the injury or risk 
of injury which he would incur by compliance. ' There is 
no ground in history,' he wrote in a despatch explaining and 
defending the proposals of the Powers — and it must be ad- 
mitted in the light of subsequent events that his words 
contained a larger measure of truth than some of us at that 
day were prepared to recognise — ' there is no ground in 



A FINAL WARNING I43 

history for the behef that the grant of practical self- 
government to the Bulgarian province would develop any 
such desire as that of incorporation in the Russian Empire 
in the population.' On the other hand, the risks of a non 
possumus were, in a speech afterwards quoted verbatim and 
with undissembled horror in the leading editorial columns 
of an anti-Russian journal, thus frankly exposed before the 
Conference by the representative of her Britannic Majesty. 
Admitting that no ' right ' of interference between the 
Sultan and his subjects could be founded on the treaty of 
1856, Lord Salisbury proceeded as follows : 

But if this Conference separates because the Sultan and 
those about his Imperial Majesty do not choose to listen to the 
counsels of the six guaranteeing Powers, the position of Turkey 
in the face of Europe will have suffered a complete change, and 
will be very perilous. It will be henceforth understood in all 
countries that the Porte, after having for twenty years enjoyed 
the security which was secured to it by the agreement of the 
Christian Powers, refuses to lend its ear to their demands 
against the sufferings which the Christian subjects of his Im- 
perial Majesty are undergoing. The conscience of Europe will 
be moved by the conviction that she exercises no further in- 
fluence in the councils of the Sublime Porte, and that she can 
no longer acquit herself of the responsibility imposed upon her 
by the efforts that she has made to protect Turkey. It is 
necessary for the Porte now to reflect on the grave consequences 
which may result from such a revulsion of feeling in the public 
opinion of Europe. They are hastening to a period but little 
distant dangers which will threaten the existence of Turkey if 
she leaves herself entirely isolated. I am charged to declare 
formally that Great Britain is resolved to give her sanction 
neither to bad administration nor to oppression, and if the Porte, 
through obstinacy or inertness, resists the efforts which are being 
made at present with the object of placing the Ottoman Empire 
upon a more secure basis, the responsibihty for the consequences 
which will follow will rest solely on the Sultan and his advisers. 



144 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

This solemn appeal was, however, fruitless. The Pashas, 
according to their wont, were prodigal of promises, but 
chary of guarantees. They steadily refused to assent to 
the military and other measures demanded of them to 
insure the effective reorganisation of the disturbed provinces, 
and nothing remained for the representatives of the Powers 
but to break up the Conference. It met for the last time 
on January 20, 1877, and two days later Lord Salisbury 
left Constantinople for England. 

It was assuredly no fault of his that his mission had 
failed. Its failure was in no degree owing, as some of his 
English censors asserted, to his display of any undue 
partiality for the Greek Christians, or to any excessive 
complaisance exhibited by him towards the demands of 
General Ignatieff. Neither was it due, as was alleged 
by other English censors, or by the same censors at other 
times, to any division of counsels among his colleagues at 
home. On the contrary, they were united in a policy of 
which he was a loyal and convinced exponent. They were 
at one in their belief that war could only be averted by 
large Turkish concessions, and in the desire to bring the 
utmost moral pressure to bear upon the Porte to procure its 
assent to them. They may well have differed among them- 
selves as to the probability of procuring that assent, but if 
so, it is only reasonable to presume that Lord Salisbury was 
not an adherent to the more sanguine view. True as i 
may have been, that prudence dictated the compliance of 
Turkey with the demands made upon her, it is no less true 
that pride as strongly dissuaded from them, if only that they 
involved serious and conspicuous derogations of Ottoman 
sovereignty. They were such concessions, in short, as a 
military Power does not usually make to the inhabitants of 



TURKISH CALCULATIONS I45 

territories whicli it has won and rules by the sword, except 
after defeat in the field ; and even while the British delegate 
was endeavouring to convince the Pashas of the advantages 
of granting ' practical self-government to the Bulgarian pro- 
vinces,' the Secretary of State for India must now and 
then have asked himself what amount of rhetorical per- 
suasion, and what force of appeal to policy and prudence, 
would be necessary on the part of Russia and the European 
Powers to obtain the assent of England to the establishment 
of administrative autonomy in the Punjab. 

' Surrender a part of your Empire, or you will lose it all,' is 
the only argument, other than defeat in the field, which could 
possibly prevail in such a case, either at Constantinople or 
Calcutta ; and then only if the facts and probabilities of 
the situation irresistibly drove it home. Some of us thought 
that facts and probabilities would drive the argument 
home to the minds of the Turks in the winter of 1876, 
but they failed, and, as the event proved, they rightly 
failed to do so. Doubtless there were Englishmen who 
had persuaded themselves that if Turkey refused to ' listen 
to reason,' she could and would be left by England abso- 
lutely at the mercy of her enemy ; and that that enemy 
could and would be allowed to have his will of her, even 
to the application of Mr. Gladstone's ' bag and baggage 
policy ' over the whole of her European dominions, and to 
the seizure of Constantinople by Russia. But the Sultan's 
shrewd advisers knew England better, as it turned out, than 
these natives of her soil. They knew that, so far as territorial 
gain and loss were concerned — and lives and money go for 
very little with Mahommedans who see Paradise ahead of 
them, and have left bankruptcy behind — they had everything 
to gain by fighting Russia for their Balkan provinces, 

L 



146 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

and nothing to lose. ' The non-intervention resolves 
of the English Cabinet were perfectly well known to 
us,' wrote Midhat Pasha a year afterwards in an English 
review, ' but we knew still better that the general interests 
of Europe and the particular interests of England were 
bound up in our dispute with Russia ; that in spite of 
all the declarations of the English Cabinet, it appeared to 
us to be absolutely impossible for her to avoid interfering 
sooner or later in this Eastern dispute.' On February 13, 
1878, just a year and three weeks after the Turkish states- 
man, relying upon this ultimate necessity of British inter- 
ference, politely bowed the baffled European delegates out 
of the council chamber, a British fleet under Admiral 
Hornby steamed through the Dardanelles, in verification of 
his forecast. 

Parliament met on February 8, and Ministers took an 
early opportunity of dispelling the popular delusion as to 
their divided counsels. Lord Salisbury spoke at some 
length in explanation of the course taken at the Conference. 
He described his policy and that of his colleagues as simply 
that of ' trying by all peaceable means in our power to in- 
duce Turkey to open her eyes to the danger which surrounds 
her, to awake from her infatuation and give to the poor popu- 
lations which have suffered so much some measure of liberty 
and safety for life and honour.' And Lord Beaconsfield bore 
testimony to the complete accord which subsisted in the 
Cabinet with respect to this policy and the efforts made to give 
effect to it. Lord Salisbury, he said, had been 'supposed not 
to have the confidence of his colleagues because he seems to 
have been attacked in some newspapers generally supporting 
the Administration, and because his colleagues have not 
written leading articles in his defence. Every public man 



DEFENDED BY LORD BEACONSFIELD I47 

is liable to such attacks. No one has been more attacked 
in the public newspapers than myself. I dare say I have had 
as many leading articles, mainly of a vituperative nature, 
written against me as any one ever had ; and yet I declare 
upon my honour that I do not know a single colleague who 
ever wrote a single line in my defence.' 

The characteristic irony of this reply to political gossip 
in no degree detracted from its effect, or obscured the 
soundness of its underlying argument ; and talk about 
' the split in the Cabinet ' died down for some time to come. 
Adverting later on in this speech to the abortive issue of 
Lord Salisbury's mission, the Prime Minister used still more 
significant language : ' Allow me,' he said, ' to say, when we 
are told that the Conference was a failure, that certainly there 
was no failure of my noble friend in the principal object of 
his mission to Constantinople. When he went there, what 
was the situation ? Then the first sine qua non was that 
Bulgaria should be occupied by a Russian army. We had 
a great many other demands of a similar kind. Who suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the withdrawal of those unreasonable 
proposals ? Why, my noble friend. My noble friend fell 
only, into the error which I should have fallen into myself, 
and I believe every member of this House would have done 
the same. He gave too much credit to the Turks for 
common sense, and he could not believe that when he 
made so admirable an arrangement in their favour, they 
would have lost so happy an opportunity.' 

A last effort was made by the Powers, at the ostensible 
instance of Russia, to maintain peace. General Ignatieff 
was despatched on a special mission to the various Euro- 
pean Courts, concluding with that of St. James's ; and in 
the month of March a Protocol, setting forth the terms on 



148 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

which the reciprocal disarmament of Russia and Turkey 
might take place, was signed by the representatives of the 
six great Powers in London. Early in April it was pre- 
sented to the Porte and rejected. The outbreak of hostilities 
was now seen to be only a matter of days. 



149 



CHAPTER X 

Declaration of war — The 'Charter of English Policy' — Anxiety in 
England — The ' large maps ' — Progress of the war and fall of 
Plevna — Differences in the Cabinet — Lord Carnarvon on the Cri- 
mean war — His resignation — Fleet despatched to the Bosphorus 
— The Reserves called out — Resignation of Lord Derby — Explana- 
tions in the House of Lords. 

On April 24, 1877, Russia declared war against the 
Ottoman Empire, and her forces crossed the Turkish 
frontiers, European and Asiatic, on the same day. About a 
fortnight later. Lord Derby addressed a despatch, afterwards 
described by the Prime Minister as the ' Charter of our 
policy,' to Prince Gortschakoff, pledging the British 
Government to neutrality in the war ' so long as Turkish 
interests alone were involved.' Other interests, however, 
' which they are equally bound and determined to defend, 
might be imperilled if the war were prolonged,' and these 
Lord Derby proceeded, on the part of the Government, 
to indicate. 

Foremost among these interests was the security of our 
route to India by way of the Suez Canal. ' An attempt,' 
wrote the Foreign Secretary, ' to blockade or otherwise to 
interfere with the Canal or its approaches, would be regarded 
by her Majesty's Government as a menace to India, and as 
a grave injury to the commerce of the world. On both 
these grounds any such step — which they hope and fully 



150 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

^believe there is no intention on the part of either belligerent 
to take — would be inconsistent with the maintenance by 
them of passive neutrality.' Russia was next warned that 
' an attack on Egypt, or the occupation of that country, 
even temporarily for purposes of war, could scarcely be 
regarded with unconcern by the neutral Powers, certainly 
not by England.' Of Constantinople it was said : 'Her 
Majesty's Government are not prepared to witness with in- 
difference the passing into other hands than those of its 
present possessors of a capital possessing so peculiar and so 
commanding a position.' The existing arrangements regu- 
lating the navigation of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles 
were described as ' wise and salutary,' and it was intimated 
that there would be ' serious objections to their alteration in 
any material sense,' Reference was made to the possibility 
of protection being needed for our interests in the Persian 
Gulf, and after reminding the Russian Chancellor of the dis- 
claimer of interested motives which the Emperor had 
uttered in a recent speech at Livadia, the despatch concluded 
as follows : ' Her Majesty's Government cannot better show 
their confidence in these declarations of his Imperial 
Majesty than by requesting Your Excellency to be so good 
as to convey to the Emperor and the Russian Government 
the frank explanation of British policy which I have had 
the honour of thus offering to you.' 

The tenor and tone of this despatch, to the stipulations 
of which Prince Gortschakoff formally signified the assent 
of Russia, were generally approved in England. Both on 
its positive and its negative side, alike in its announcement 
and in its limitations of British neutrality, it faithfully 
reflected the then temper of the great majority of the British 
public. The ferment created by the Bulgarian agitation had 



FEELING IN ENGLAND I5I 

now almost entirely subsided, and it was only a very small 
and fanatical section of Englishmen who still continued 
urging their country to take part with Russia in ' coercing 
the Turk.' On the other hand the minority which was 
prepared to counsel the immediate armed intervention of 
England as an ally of Turkey in the struggle was certainly 
not much larger. Nevertheless, as the year advanced and 
the events of the war unfolded themselves, the position of 
the Government became more and more difficult. The 
heroic defence of Plevna by the Turkish forces under Osman 
Pasha appealed powerfully to English sympathies, while, on 
the other hand, the successes of Russia in Asiatic Turkey 
excited a certain amount of English alarm. It soon became 
clear that neither the forces nor the fortresses of the Otto- 
man Porte in that region were strong enough to offer any 
very prolonged resistance to the Russian arms ; and Russia 
once established at Erzeroum, would command that very 
valley of the Euphrates along which we had but a few years 
before been seriously considering the advisability of con- 
structing a railway to the Persian Gulf as a second route to 
our Indian possessions. 

Thus throughout the summer and autumn of 1878 the 
feeling in favour of Turkey continued to grow. The war, in- 
deed, had not lasted two months before Ministers found their 
ears importunately assailed with the cry of ' British interests 
in danger.' A considerable share in the task of resistance to 
this popular movement devolved, not unnaturally, upon the 
official guardian of that particular British interest which was 
alleged to be principally imperilled. As Secretary for India, 
Lord Salisbury no doubt felt himself bound to allay the 
apprehensions of danger to our Eastern dependency, and 
hiS;, as we all know, is one of those natures to which it would 



152 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

be instinctive to dispel a groundless alarm by employing 
ridicule as the instrument of reassurance. 

Though often an effective, it is not always a judicious 
one ; nor was it so in this instance. In reply to a speech 
from Lord De Mauley as to Russia's advance in Central Asia, 
Lord Salisbury remarked that, in discussions of this kind, a 
great deal of apprehension arises from ' the popular use of 
maps on too small a scale. As with such maps you are 
able to put a thumb on India and a finger on Russia, some 
persons at once think that the political situation is alarming, 
and that India must be looked to. If the noble lord would 
only use a larger map — say one on the scale of the Ordnance 
map of England — he would find that the distance between 
Russia and British India is not to be measured by the 
finger and thumb, but by a rule. There are between them 
deserts and mountainous chains measured by thousands of 
miles, and these are serious obstacles to any advance of 
Russia, however well-planned such an advance might be.' 
This ironical reference to the scale of the Ordnance survey 
was taken seriously the next morning by the most serious 
of all English newspapers, past, present, and to come, and 
Lord De Mauley was solemnly advised by the ' Times ' to 
study Central Asian geography by the aid of an imaginary 
Brobdingnagian map, on which the distance between Askabad 
and Peshawur would be something like seventy feet. 

At a dinner of the Merchant Taylors' Company the 
same evening. Lord Salisbury delivered a still keener sati- 
rical stroke at the alarmist. ' I have,' he said, ' a colonial 
friend who is very much exercised in his mind, and in a 
very anxious state in connection with the Cape of Good 
Hope. He pointed out to me that Russia was in Armenia, 
that Armenia is the key to Syria, that Syria is the key tq 



THE 'LARGE MAPS' 1 53 

Egypt, and that any one advancing into Egypt has the key 
to Africa. By this list of keys long drawn out, he shows 
that the present victories of Russia seriously menace South 
Africa. I have done my best to console him, but I feel 
that his anxious feelings are only characteristic of the appre- 
hensions which I hear around me.' 

This pleasantry, which did but slightly exaggerate the 
forebodings of an article recently published in a London 
newspaper — the 'list of keys' closing in this case with Egypt 
and the overland route to India — was no doubt a fairer hit 
than the other. But its discretion was no less doubtful. 
Both sallies only served to irritate many Englishmen, Anglo- 
Indian, an|d other, who were as familiar with all the geo- 
graphical distances in question as the Indian Secretary him- 
self, and who naturally resented being held up to the public 
as ignorant simpletons merely because they differed in 
opinion from him as to the amount of military and other 
difficulty interposed by these distances to a Russian advance. 

Such inconsiderate jests, moreover, have the habit of 
coming, like the curses of the proverb, ' home to roost.' The 
day was not far distant when Lord Salisbury and his col- 
leagues were to engage in a war the policy of which was 
plausibly assailable, and was, in fact, assailed, by the very 
arguments which he here supplied. In less than a year and 
a half from the utterance of these long-remembered words, 
an opponent of the Afghan War might have asked Lord 
Salisbury whether the distance between Askabad and 
Peshawur had diminished because half a dozen Russian 
officers had been entertained by Shere Ali at Cabul, and 
whether in any case even the distance from the Afghan 
capital itself to the Indian frontier would not look somewhat 
fprmidable on a map of the Ordnance scale, 



154 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURV 

Meanwhile the summer of 1877 wore into autumn, and 
autumn was rapidly passing into winter, while the war 
still raged, as indecisive as bloody, in Eastern Europe. 
English sympathies, as has been said, were setting more and 
more strongly all the time in favour of the Turks, and, 
Cabinet Ministers being men, the Government may be pre- 
sumed to have been not insensible to those subtle influences 
with which the air was charged. But they held steadily by 
the policy which they had marked out for themselves ; and 
there are no grounds for supposing that at any time 
throughout the summer and autumn their views as to the 
specific steps which this policy dictated, or the language in 
which it should be represented to their countrymen in Parlia- 
mentary and outdoor oratory, or to foreign Powers in diplo- 
matic despatches, differed in any material degree. 

As late as the month of October, Lord Salisbury spoke at 
Bradford, and, reiterating the declaration that her Majesty's 
Government would pursue British interests and British 
interests alone, proceeded to justify, in words, which the 
whole body of his colleagues would doubtless have re- 
echoed, the attitude of strict neutrality which had up to 
that moment been maintained. Nor, indeed, up to that 
date, and even for nearly two months longer, was the 
military situation in the Balkan provinces such as could 
possibly have developed any latent potentialities of dissen- 
sion in the minds of Ministers. So long as Turkey con- 
tinued to hold Russia at bay in Bulgaria, as she was then 
doing, it was of course evident — to all at any rate save that 
small minority of Englishmen absolutely unrepresented in 
the Cabinet, who were alarmed at the progress of the Russian 
arms in Armenia — that British interests were not and could 
not be endangered, and that the invader would have to 



FALL OF PLEVNA 155 

break down the resistance of the invaded in Europe before 
any danger of this sort could possibly arise. 

But on December lo the scene changed. On that day 
Plevna fell. Osman Pasha and his thirty thousand stout 
soldiers became prisoners of war ; and the road to the 
Balkans lay open before Russia. Three weeks later, on 
New Year's Day, 1878, General Gourko, with the Russian 
Imperial Guard, crossed the Etropol Balkans — a north-west- 
ward running spur of the mountain chain — and pushed on 
to Sofia, which was captured virtually without a struggle. 
Early in the next week Skobeleff and his force made their 
way across the main range, by the Troyan Pass, marched 
eastward and occupied Kezanlik, thus commanding the 
southern outlet of the Schipka, of which General Radetzky 
held the northern entrance, and shutting up as in a trap the 
Turkish troops then in occupation of the pass. This force, 
after a severe engagement, was captured by General Ra- 
detzky, and with this the resisting power of Turkey collapsed. 
The Russians marched to Adrianople and occupied it 
without a fight. Suleiman Pasha, with the remnant of the 
Ottoman army, fell back to Kavala on the coast of the 
^gean, whence he embarked to Constantinople. The 
whole Balkan Peninsula lay at the feet of Russia. There 
was nothing to stop her advance to the peninsula of Gallipoli, 
where she could close the Dardanelles against the fleets of 
all Europe, while the remainder of her army pursued their 
eastward march to Constantinople. 

The internal history of the Beaconsfield Administration 
during the three eventful and exciting months which elapsed 
between the fall of Plevna and the definitive resignation of 
Lord Derby, awaits the Greville of the future. Or it may 
exist in the pages of some Ministerial diarist, not to be 



156. THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

given to the world till the last of the actors in that domestic 
drama of cross purposes and conflicting counsels shall have 
passed away. Meanwhile we may at least congratulate 
ourselves that the ' Bous Megas ' of the Privy Councillor's 
obligation to secrecy did not 'tread so heavily' on the 
tongues of some of ' them that know ' as to leave us quite 
without material for the construction of an unofficial narra- 
tive of the events. On the contrary, thanks to Parliament- 
ary statements of an unusual frankness, and to one or two 
animated debates in the House of Lords in which polemics 
got the better of discretion, one is able to piece together 
the public incidents of those days into a connected story of 
considerable verisimilitude. 

The fall of Plevna was undoubtedly, as well it might be, 
a shock to Ministers. It was a warning to all of them 
that there was probably, and perhaps even rapidly, approach- 
ing, that critical time for every man who has both to 
counsel and to act, when abstract doctrines of policy have to 
be applied to concrete facts, and when each has to decide 
for himself what or whether any action is demanded of him 
as the result of such application. For months past the 
members of the Cabinet had been repeating to each other 
and to the public — all no doubt with complete and equal 
good faith — that it was their duty to maintain a passive 
attitude until British interests were menaced. 'British 
interests' they had perhaps sufficiently defined for their 
own as well as for Russia's purposes, in the so-called 
' Charter of our policy.' But the moment was approaching 
when each member of the Cabinet had to put to himself 
the two momentous questions : What acts or words on the 
part of Russia — now that Turkey is virtually at her mercy — 
will constitute ^ menace to British interests ? And assuming 



DIVISIONS IN THE CAfilNET 1 57 

such menace to arise, what mihtary or naval measures must 
we adopt to meet it ? 

That the Cabinet spht upon the latter of these questions 
is matter of history. To some people it seemed to be also 
a matter of reproach to Ministers that they were thus 
unable to agree. Nevertheless to those who look at the 
question a little more closely, this division of counsels will, I 
think, be seen to discredit our political system rather than 
our politicians. Surely, if it has become proverbial that a 
council of war never fights — or in other words, that among, 
say, half a dozen generals, there is sure to be a majority 
unduly opposed to risks — it is hardly surprising that sixteen 
civilians should not have possessed, without exception, the 
requisite amount of nerve. The wonder would have been 
if they had been all of one mind ; and perhaps the 
wonder will be, if any resolutions which may possibly 
involve the country in war are taken unanimously by any 
unwieldy Cabinet of the future. 

It seems tolerably clear that differences began to mani- 
fest themselves in the Cabinet between the fall of Plevna — 
if no earlier — and the end of the year. On December 13, 
two days after the news of Osman Pasha's surrender reached 
England, a despatch was addressed by Lord Derby to the 
Government of St. Petersburg, expressing the hope that if 
the Russians advanced south of the Balkans, no attempt 
would be made to occupy Constantinople or the Dardanelles, 
and adding that if any such attempt were made, ' the 
Queen's Government must hold themselves free to take 
whatever course might appear to them necessary for the 
protection of British interests.' A Cabinet council was 
held on the following day, Friday, December 14, when 
the new situation, it may be presumed, was anxiously 



158 THE MARQUIS OP SALISBURY 

discussed. The Cabinet met again on Monday the 17th, and 
yet again on the following day. After this council it was 
announced that Parliament would meet on the day in 
January to which it then stood formally prorogued. 

This resolution, as Lord Derby some months after- 
, wards told the House of Lords, in one of those informing 
bursts of ex-Ministerial candour to which reference has been 
already made, was a compromise on a proposition 'that 
Parliament should meet even earlier still.' It may fairly be 
inferred from all this that differences of opinion had already 
begun to manifest themselves in the Cabinet, and that these 
were of a sufficiently acute kind to require the holding of 
three Cabinet meetings before they could even be tem- 
porarily composed. To contend in the middle of December 
that Parliament ought to 'meet much earlier than' the 
middle of January practically amounts to the contention 
that it should be summoned before Christmas ; and we may 
take it, therefore, that the political situation and prospect 
disclosed by the fall of Plevna so differently affected 
different members of the Cabinet that whereas one party 
held that Parliament should be summoned at once — or in 
other words, that warlike preparations requiring Parliamen- 
tary assent should be commenced immediately — another 
party saw no present reason for antedating the meeting of 
Parliament at all. Practically, however, the compromise 
amounted to a victory for the party of inaction. 

Events, however, were to prove too strong for them, 
although Prince Gortschakoff, to his credit as a diplomatist 
be it said, did all that fair words could do to strengthen 
their hands. On December 16 he replied to Lord Derby's 
communication, recalling the assurance given in his despatch 
of seven months before, and repeated in a conversation held 



OFFER OF MEDIATION I59 

by the Czar with Colonel Wellesley in July, that Constanti- 
nople should only be occupied if it became an absolute 
military necessity to do so. ' If the obstinacy or illusions 
of the Porte,' said Prince Gortschakoff, 'shall oblige his 
Majesty to pursue his military operations in order to dictate 
a peace responding to the openly proclaimed object of the 
war, his Imperial Majesty has always reserved to himself, 
and still continues to claim in regard to this point, the full 
right of action which is the claim of every belligerent.' The 
despatch concluded by asking that the British interests 
which this proceeding might touch should be still further 
defined, so that some means might be found to reconcile 
these interests with those of Russia. 

This despatch, the substance of which was known by 
telegraph a fortnight before its full text arrived, no doubt 
strengthened the peace party in the Cabinet ; though it 
was obvious, of course, for their opponents to reply that 
' military necessity ' is an extremely elastic term, and that 
Russia had only to propose impossible conditions of armis- 
tice to Turkey in order to provide herself with the required 
pretext for pushing on to Constantinople. Meanwhile an 
offer of English good offices in mediation between the 
belligerents had been met by Russia with the reply that 
the submission of Turkey must be signified by her applica- 
tion for an armistice to the Russian commander in the 
field. This answer created, not quite justly perhaps, a 
certain amount of irritation in England, and undoubtedly 
added, with more show of reason, to the apprehension that 
Russian diplomacy was preparing to have its hand pre- 
tendedly forced by Russian militarism. 

On January 2, the desire to combat this apprehension 
became too strong for the official discretion of one of the 



16D THfi MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Ministers. Replying on that day to a deputation of South 
African merchants, Lord Carnarvon expressed his complete 
dissent from the idea that there was ' any affront or insult 
conveyed to England ' by the Russian rejection of her 
peace overtures. This was harmless and even useful 
enough ; but the Colonial Secretary went on to express the 
hope that we should not in this country ' lash ourselves up 
into a nervous apprehension for so-called British honour 
and British interests.' And in a later, and yet more signi- 
ficant passage of the speech he spoke as follows : ' Most of 
us in this room are old enough to remember the outbreak 
of the Crimean war. We can remember how Russia on the 
one hand through self-deception, and this country on the 
other hand in a great measure through an extreme excite- 
ment, drifted — to use an expression which became historical 
• — into a war. I apprehend that there are few people now 
who look back upon that war with satisfaction, and I am 
confident that there is nobody in this country insane 
enough to desire a repetition of it.' 

On the day after the delivery of this speech the Cabinet 
met, and Lord Beaconsfield, to quote his colleague's sub- 
sequent account of the matter in the House of Lords, 
'thought himself at liberty to condemn very severely the 
language that I had used. My Lords, I need not re-state 
the terms of that controversy on either side ; I took time 
to consider the course which it was my duty to take, and 
then, in a memorandum which I had drawn up, but with 
which I think it unnecessary to trouble the House, I 
recapitulated what had passed, and having vindicated the 
position I had taken, I reaffirmed, in the hearing of my 
colleagues, and without any contradiction, the propositions 
I had then laid down. The noble Earl the Prime Minister 



LORD CARNARVON AND HIS CHIEF l6l 

was good enough to ask me for a copy of it, and so the 
matter ended ; but no pubhc or private disavowal was 
uttered or hinted at with regard to what I then said. I 
have therefore felt myself justified, and I still feel myself 
justified, in believing that where no such disapproval was 
uttered, I had not misrepresented the opinion of her 
Majesty's Government at that time.' 

No incident could better illustrate the engaging sim- 
plicity of Lord Carnarvon's character, and his well-known 
tendency to suppose that conscious rectitude of motive is a 
substitute for discretion. One can quite believe that the 
literary style of his memorandum was admirable, and its 
matter theoretically convincing. The ' propositions ' which 
he had ' laid down ' in his reply to the South African 
deputation were no doubt in perfect accord with the 
'charter' of English policy, as framed at the outbreak of 
the war. No doubt, too. Lord Carnarvon thoroughly felt 
that so soon as any ' British interest ' therein declared 
inviolable should appear to him to be in any way menaced, 
he would be as ready as any of his colleagues to take active 
measures for its protection. And in the consciousness of 
this, he did not hesitate to describe a war waged five-and- 
twenty years before — also for the protection of British 
interests, albeit in his opinion erroneously conceived — as a 
war of which nobody would be ' insane enough ' to desire the 
repetition. There spoke the statesman who, because he 
was conscious of his own determination to uphold the 
integrity of the Empire, saw no objection to discussing Home 
Rule a few years afterwards as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 
with an Irish Nationalist leader who was known to be 
aiming at the destruction of the unity of the realm. 

Lord Carnarvon's complacent inference from the silence 

M 



l62 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

of the Premier after being furnished with a copy of the 
memorandum was equally characteristic of the man. It 
is, of course, evident that Lord Beaconsfield on this, as 
on many another occasion in his life, observed the excellent 
maxim that the 'least said the soonest mended.' If a 
' split in the Cabinet ' was destined to come, there could be 
no use in replying to Lord Carnarvon's protest ; if it was 
to be averted, a judicious Premier's best way of averting it 
would be to let his rebuke produce whatever effect it might 
be capable of producing, and to refrain from intensifying 
the natural irritation which it had created by engaging in 
any personal controversy with his colleague. Time, indeed, 
was soon to show that Lord Beaconsfield was prepared 
to make greater sacrifices than this to keep his Cabinet 
together at such a crisis as was approaching. 

On January 12, a telegram was sent by the Government 
to the British ambassador at St. Petersburg, requesting him 
to obtain a specific assurance, rendered urgently necessary 
in view of the positions which the invading army then held, 
that no Russian force should be sent to the peninsula of 
Gallipoli. This message was conveyed to Prince Gortscha- 
koff by Lord Augustus Loftus on the following day, and two 
days later, on the 15th, the Russian Chancellor replied that his 
Government had no intention of ordering an occupation of 
Gallipoli unless the Turkish regular troops should concen- 
trate there, and that he hoped that the Queen's Govern- 
ment did not contemplate any such step on their own part, 
as it would be a departure from neutrality, and would en- 
courage the Turks to resist. 

But the four days which elapsed between the despatch 
of this reply and the meeting of Parliament were anxious 
days for the Cabinet. On the 14th, while the despatch 



MINISTERIAL RESIGNATIONS 1 63 

was still on its way, a Council was held in the absence 
of Lord Derby, who was confined to his house by indis- 
position. Here, having before them a telegram from Mr. 
Layard transmitting a report that the Russians were march- 
ing on Gallipoli, Ministers took the momentous resolution 
to despatch the fleet to the Dardanelles, and on the 
following day Lord Carnarvon tendered his resignation to 
his chief. The same day, however. Prince Gortschakoff's 
reply arrived, and Lord Beaconsfield, anxious to avoid or 
defer as long as possible a rupture with his colleague, 
informed Lord Carnarvon that the resolution of the 14th 
was rescinded, and that the proposed sailing orders to the 
fleet would not be given. 

Parliament met on the 17th with the Colonial Secretary's 
resignation still in the hands of the Prime Minister, who 
returned it to him with the statement that ' there was 
no important difference ' between them. Their agreement, 
however, was but of brief duration. On January 23, the 
Cabinet again met, and reports having now reached 
Ministers that the Russians were marching to Adrianople, 
that crowds of refugees were pouring into the Turkish 
capital, and that the Sultan was about to fly to Broussa, 
while in the meantime the all-important information as to 
the terms of peace proposed by Russia to Turkey was being 
strictly, and as was suspected, studiously, withheld, it was 
resolved both to despatch the fleet definitively to Constanti- 
nople and to ask Parliament for a vote of credit of six millions. 
The order to sail was sent off the same evening. 

On the following day both Lord Carnarvon and Lord 
Derby tendered their resignations, but on the evening of 
that day, informal and private information having been 
received of the conclusion of an armistice, together 

M 2 



164 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

apparently with a general though imperfect account of its 
terms, a telegram was despatched to Admiral Hornby 
directing him not to pass the Dardanelles, but to retire 
and anchor in Besika Bay. This countermanding order 
reached the fleet just in time to arrest it when on the point 
of entering the Straits. Lord Derby thereupon recalled his 
resignation, while Lord Carnarvon adhered to his, and 
definitely retired from the Cabinet. 

The Foreign Minister, however, was destined soon to 
follow the Colonial Secretary into retirement. It is true that 
he managed to overcome his objection to the despatch of 
the British fleet to the Bosphorus, the order for which was 
given ' positively for the last time ' on February 8, and 
executed on the 13th under protest from the Porte. But it 
is just possible that Lord Derby's ultimate assent to the step 
may have been facilitated by observation of the movements 
of Russia, in the reports of which, however occasionally exag- 
gerated or premature — as was the case with the rumour which 
brought the historic but far from creditable debate on the Vote 
of Credit to an abrupt close— there was enough to convince 
all but the blindest and most reckless partisanship that this 
naval demonstration was imperatively called for. To-day, 
at any rate, no one can doubt, upon an impartial review of 
the whole crisis, that whether with or without the connivance 
of St. Petersburg, the Russian commanders were, to use a 
familiar expression, persistently ' trying it on,' Central-Asian 
fashion, with the British Government throughout the month 
of January and the early days of February, and that any 
further irresolute fidgeting with the fleet would inevitably 
have brought the Russians to Constantinople. 

But this miHtary danger provided against, the political 
prospect grew steadily darker. The longer the original 



THE RESERVES CALLED OUT 165 

terms of armistice were looked at, the less they were liked 
in England, and the protracted delay in the Russo-Turkish 
peace negotiations, and the profound secrecy in which their 
result was for some time shrouded, served to increase both 
popular and Ministerial uneasiness. The Treaty of San 
Stefano was signed on March 3, but it was not till the 22nd 
that its full text was made public. A despatch received 
from St. Petersburg four days later practically brought the 
international negotiations for a Congress, which had been 
going on ever since the armistice, to a summary close. 

In this despatch, the Russian Chancellor, who had been 
hitherto temporising with the other European Cabinets, 
threw off the mask, and boldly announced that though the 
Czar's Government was considerate enough to ' leave to 
other Powers the liberty of raising such questions at the 
Congress as they may think fit, it reserved to itself the 
liberty of accepting or not accepting the discussion of these 
questions.' In the view of every member of the Cabinet 
but Lord Derby, there was but one possible answer to this 
arrogant defiance. At the council held on the 27th, the 
Government resolved to close the negotiations for a Congress 
and to call out the Reserves. On the following morning 
Lord Derby — also ' positively for the last time ' on this occa- 
sion — resigned, and on the following evening in the House 
of Lords explained the step in a brief statement in which he 
informed his hearers that measures had been resolved upon 
by the Cabinet which he could not consider ' as being 
prudent in the interests of European peace, or as being 
necessary for the safety of the country, or as being warranted 
by the state of matters abroad.' 

What these measures were remains a Cabinet secret 
which has never been regularly, or by her Majesty's per- 



l66 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

mission, divulged. Irregularly, and without that permission, 
the measures in question were alleged by Lord Derby in 
the House of Lords in the July following to have included, 
together with the calling out of the Reserves, a decision to 
' seize upon and occupy the island of Cyprus, together with 
a point on the Syrian coast, a project which was to be carried 
out by a secret naval expedition sent out from England, 
with or without the consent of the Sultan.' Lord Salisbury, 
who followed him, denied that any such resolution had ever 
been taken by the Cabinet, though he admitted that ' all 
kinds of contingencies are spoken of and all possible poli- 
cies discussed at Cabinet meetings, and that it was quite 
possible that his noble friend may have heard some project 
discussed by this member of the Cabinet or that.' The 
two accounts are fairly reconcilable, and the alleged conflict 
of statements between the two Ministers has been much 
exaggerated. It is easy to understand that even a ' discus- 
sion' of some such foreign adventure, plus an actual resolu- 
tion to call out the Reserves, would be quite enough to 
drive Lord Derby from ofiEice. 



16/ 



CHAPTER XI 

Lord Salisbury becomes Foreign Secretary — The Salisbury Circular — 
Its effect — Agreement for a congress — The ' unauthentic ' memo- 
randum — Ministerial answers and their defence^-The Treaty of 
Berlin — The Afghan war— Mr. Gladstone's 'passionate pilgrimage' 
— The elections of iSSo. 

It was a turning-point in the career of both statesmen, and 
for the younger of them it proved that decisive tidal hour in 
his affairs from which the flood was henceforth to bear him 
without check or hindrance to the highest poHtical fortune. 
On April i, Lord Salisbury's appointment to the post of 
Foreign Secretary was announced in Parliament, and on 
the following morning, to the boundless gratification of the 
public and to the infinite chagrin of those who had chosen 
to assume that Lord Derby's views of policy were in the 
main identical with those of his successor, the memorable 
Salisbury Circular, a note addressed to the representatives 
of the various Powers in justification of the refusal of 
England to attend the Congress, appeared in the public 
prints. It was a document conspicuous alike for its 
dignified spirit, its high argumentative power, and the firm 
though courteous resolution of its language ; and its imme- 
diate effect was not only to rally all the patriotic elements 
in the country to the side of the Government, but to con- 
vince Russia — as her subsequent diplomacy showed — that 



1 68 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

her arrogant attitude must be abandoned, and that some 
accommodation with England, which would render the meet- 
ing of a Congress possible, must at all costs be sought. 

The circular began by setting forth the impossibility, from 
the point of view either of policy or of international law, of 
admitting the pretensions of Russia to reserve to herself a 
right of refusing at discretion to accept a discussion, in a 
Congress of the Powers, of any provisions of the treaty of San 
Stefano which she chose to declare final. Even if the terms 
of the treaty were such as were likely to be, without excep- 
tion, approved, an inspection of the instrument would show, 
the Foreign Secretary said, that her Majesty's Government 
' could not in an European Congress accept any partial or 
fragmentary examination of its provisions.' Every material 
stipulation which it contained involved a departure from 
the treaty of 1856, and it was impossible therefore for her 
Majesty's Government, without violating the spirit of the 
Protocol of the Conference of 1871 (which had affirmed it 
to be ' an essential principle of the law of nations that no 
Power can liberate itself from the engagements of a 
treaty, nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with the 
consent of the contracting Powers by means of an amicable 
arrangement ' ), to acquiesce in ' the withdrawal from the 
cognizance of the Powers of articles in the Treaty of San 
Stefano which are modifications of existing treaty engage- 
ments and inconsistent with them.' 

Passing thence to an examination of the provisions 
of the document in detail, the Circular proceeded as 
follows : 

The most important consequences to which the treaty 
practically leads are those which result from its action as a 
whole upon the nations of South-eastern Europe. By the 



THE SALISBURY CIRCULAR 169 

articles erecting the new Bulgaria, a strong Slav state will be 
created under the auspices and control of Russia, possessing 
important harbours upon the shores of the Black Sea and the 
Archipelago, and conferring upon that Power a preponderating 
influence over both political and commercial relations in those 
seas. It will be so constituted as to merge in the dominant 
Slav majority a considerable mass of population which is Greek 
in race and sympathy, and which views with alarm the prospect 
of absorption in a community alien to it not only in nationality 
but in political tendency and in religious allegiance. The 
provisions by which this new state is to be subjected to a ruler 
whom Russia will practically choose, its administration framed 
by a Russian commissary, and the first working of its institutions 
commenced under the control of a Russian army, sufficiently 
indicate the political system of which it is to form a part. 

Then, after pointing out that the stipulation, in itself 
highly commendable, for the concession of improved institu- 
tions for the populations of Thessaly and Epirus under the 
supervision of the Russian Government was one which 
could not be viewed with satisfaction either by the Govern- 
ment of Greece, or by the Powers ; that the territorial 
severance from Constantinople of the Greek, Albanian, and 
Slavonic provinces which were still to be left under the 
government of the Porte, would be ' a source of administra- 
tive embarrassment and political weakness to the Porte 
itself, and would expose the inhabitants to a serious risk of 
anarchy,' Lord Salisbury went on to show that by the other 
portions of the treaty analogous results are arrived at upon 
other frontiers of the Ottoman empire. Thus — 

The compulsory alienation of Bessarabia from Roumania, 
the extension of Bulgaria to the shores of the Black Sea, which 
are principally inhabited by Mussulmans and Greeks, and the 
acquisition of the important harbour of Batoum, will make the 
rule of the Russian Government dominant over all the vicinity 



170 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

of the Black Sea. The acquisition of the strongholds of 
Armenia will place the population of that province under the 
immediate influence of the Power which holds them ; while the 
extensive trade which now passes from Trebizond to Persia 
will, in consequence of the cessions in Kurdistan be liable to be 
arrested at the pleasure of the Russian Government by the 
prohibitory barriers of their commercial system. 

Nor, the Foreign Secretary went on to insist, was it only 
the separate and individual effect of these various stipu- 
lations that the Powers had to consider. Objections urged 
against them individually might be met by arguments 
advanced to show that they were individually not incon- 
sistent with the attainment of those conditions which it was 
the object of all the present negotiations to establish in the 
provinces of European and Asiatic Turkey. But it was their 
combined effect which should be looked at — the results 
arising not so much from the language of any single article 
in the treaty as from the operation of the instrument as a 
whole ; and this ' combined effect ' of the provisions of the 
treaty was to ' depress almost to the point of entire subjec- 
tion the political independence of the Government of 
Constantinople.' Hence a discussion limited to articles 
selected by one Power in the Congress would be an illusory 
remedy for the dangers which would result from the state of 
things which the treaty proposed to establish. 

And with the clear and firm declaration of policy which 
follows the circular closed : 

In requiring a full consideration of the general interests 
which the new arrangements threaten to affect, her Majesty's 
Government believe that they are taking the surest means of 
securing these objects. They would willingly have entered a 
Congress in which the stipulations in question could have been 
examined as a whole in their relation to existing treaties, to 



THE SALISBURY CIRCULAR 171 

the acknowledged right of Great Britain and of other Powers, 
and to the beneficent ends which the united action of Europe has 
always been directed to secure. But neither the interests which 
her Majesty's Government are specially bound to guard, nor the 
well-being of the regions with which the treaty deals, would be 
consulted by the assembling of a Congress whose deliberations 
were to be restricted by such reservations as those which have 
been laid down by Prince Gortschakoff in his most recent com- 
munications. 

The effect of this powerful state paper upon public 
opinion was instantaneous and immense. It was interpreted 
abroad and at home as signifying that England had at last 
found her policy on the Eastern Question, and that her 
Ministers, no longer weakened and divided by distracted 
counsels, did not now shrink from plainly notifying Russia 
as to the points at which her aggressive military policy in- 
fringed in their judgment on Enghsh and European interests. 
And the military measures which speedily followed were 
everywhere recognised as the long-delayed proof that the 
EngUsh Government were in earnest, and would protect 
these interests, if necessary, by force of arms. 

Those among us who denounced the settlement to which 
the Government ultimately assented, and who contrast it 
with that which England was represented in the Salisbury 
Circular as determined to insist on, forget what the situation 
was before that document was issued to the world. The 
Settlement of Berlin must be compared, not with any ideal 
arrangement framed in the minds of patriotic Britons on an 
ex post facto theory of possibilities, but with the treaty of 
San Stefano. Those who complain of the compromise with 
Russia as a bad bargain for England should remember that 
at the time when Lord Salisbury received the seals of the 
Foreign Office, Russia shewed not the slightest disposition 



1/2 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

for compromise at all ; that on the contrary there was evi- 
dently reason to believe her in earnest in her monstrous pre. 
tension to withdraw that treaty from the jurisdiction of 
Europe ; and that probably nothing but the energetic 
action of England could have moved her from her deter- 
mination to do so. 

The Circular and the hand which penned it did a great 
work at this crisis, if only in bringing Russia to reason. It 
produced a speedy change in her attitude, and in that of her 
representative. Prince Gortschakoff replied in detail to its 
criticisms on the treaty of San Stefano, and in a circular 
in which he communicated his reply to the otlier Powers, 
he pointed out that ' the Marquis of Salisbury tells us what 
the English Government does not wish, but says nothing of 
what it does wish. We think it would be useful if his Lord- 
ship would be good enough to make this latter point known 
in order to promote an understanding of the situation.' 
Whether this suggestion was at once acted upon or not there 
is nothing to show, but, on the face of it, it was calculated to 
open the way for an amicable conference between the two 
Governments ; and it is to be supposed that during the 
months of April and May, while Parliament, at the instiga- 
tion of the Opposition leaders, was engaged in unworthy 
wranglings over the military measures undertaken by the 
Government for the protection of the national interests, the 
Foreign Secretary and the Russian Ambassador were en- 
deavouring to arrange such a preliminary compromise of the 
respective claims of the two Powers as might render it pos- 
sible for the Congress to meet. 

On May 27, it was rumoured in the press, and admitted 
by Ministers in Parliament, that the prospects of a Con- 
gress had materially improved 3 and on June 3, it was ofifi- 



THE SECRET AGREEMENT 173 

cially announced in both Houses that the Congress would 
meet at Berhn, and that England would be represented at 
its deliberations by the Prime Minister and the Foreign 
Secretary. Three days, however, before this announcement 
was made, there had appeared in a London evening news- 
paper what purported to be a summary of an agreement 
arrived at between Lord Salisbury and Count Schouvaloff ; 
and after the short discussion which had taken place in the 
Lords on the appointments of the two British plenipoten- 
tiaries. Lord Grey inquired whether there was ' any truth in 
the statement' which had appeared in the journal in ques- 
tion ' as to the terms agreed upon between this coun- 
try and Russia.' To which Lord Salisbury returned the 
memorable and much criticised answer (whereof more here- 
after), ' The statement to which the noble Earl refers, and 
other statements that I have seen, are wholly unauthentic, 
and are not deserving of the confidence of your Lordships' 
House.' 

On June 8, Lord Beaconsfield left for Berlin, and was 
followed shortly afterwards by his colleague. On the 13th 
the Congress met for the despatch of formal business, and 
next day, the same evening newspaper in which had pre- 
viously appeared the outline of the rumoured Anglo-Russian 
Agreement, published what purported to be its full text. On 
June 1 7, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, in his capacity 
of Leader of the House in the absence of his chief, was 
asked whether the memorandum in question was or was not 
' substantially correct.' The reply of the Duke, which he 
afterwards admitted that he had had time 'thoroughly to 
consider and to weigh,' and which, indeed, showed signs 
of having undergone that process, was to this effect : ' My 
Lords, in answer to the question which has just been 



174 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

addressed to me by the noble Earl opposite, I have to 
state that the document to which he alluded was evidently 
furnished to the journal in which it was published by some 
person who had access to papers that were confidential. 
So far as her Majesty's Government are concerned, the 
publication of that document was totally unauthorised, and 
therefore surreptitious, and as an explanation of the policy 
of the Government it is incomplete, and consequently in- 
accurate.' 

To a similar question put by Lord Hartington in the 
House of Commons, Sir Stafford Northcote replied, with a 
more intelligent recollection or a more careful recital of 
the prescribed formula, that the document was ' not only 
unauthorised but surreptitious,' and repeated the assurance 
that ' as a statement of the policy of her Majesty's Govern- 
ment it was incomplete, and therefore inaccurate.' 

Unauthorised and surreptitious we now know that it 
was, because the Government afterwards instituted a pro- 
secution against the person who had secretly made a copy 
of the oflicial document from which it was taken ; ' incom- 
plete ' it may have been ; but ' inaccurate ' it was not. On 
July 13, the treaty of Berlin was signed, and a comparison 
of this instrument with the treaty of San Stefano on the one 
hand and the Salisbury Circular on the other will at once 
show that the main concessions reciprocally made to each 
other by England and Russia, the abatements of Russian 
demands, and the waivers of English objections closely, if 
not exactly, follow the lines of the ' surreptitious ' preliminary 
agreement. 

A loud outcry arose from the more extreme partisans of 
Turkey against the terms of this settlement, and against the 
concealment which had been practised by the representatives 



ATTACKED ON BOTH SIDES I75 

of this country as regarded the negotiations which had led to 
it. In the antistrophe of this chorus the Radicals joined. 
Absolutely dissenting from the Jingo view that the Berlin 
treaty was a mere surrender to Russia, and, indeed, 
objecting to it only on the ground that it reduced the 
concessions originally demanded by that Power for her 
Bulgarian protege, the Radical professed as much indigna- 
tion as the Jingo at that preliminary Anglo-Russian arrange- 
ment by which alone the ultimate compromise could have 
been arrived at, and Bulgaria have been enabled to reap 
any of the fruits of Russia's victories, except (possibly) after 
another and far more formidable European war. 

Both Jingo and Radical denounced, though obviously 
with unequal degrees of sincerity. Lord Salisbury's mis- 
leading answer to Lord De Mauley's question on June 3. 
Nor am I concerned to question the substantial accuracy of 
their description of it. It was an answer ' by the card ' — an 
answer calculated and intended to throw the inquirer off the 
scent. Before, however, we attempt to measure the blame 
to which it may be open on that account, let us at least call 
upon the censors to define their grounds of condemnation. 
Not all these gentlemen were strict moralists : far from it. 
Some of them would have been ready enough to overlook 
the questionable reply, if they had relished the result of 
those negotiations which it was designed to conceal. These 
persons, therefore, merely denounced the Foreign Secretary 
for secretly pursuing a policy to which they happened to 
object ; and they may be left out of court accordingly. 

Others, with more principle, but even less reason, com- 
plained apparently that an English Minister should practise 
a?iy concealment of his foreign policy from the country. 
In other words, they objected to his asserting the recognised 



176 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

right and discharging the admitted duty of every such 
Minister — a right and duty the assertion and discharge of 
which can alone make diplomacy possible, a right and duty 
which are asserted and discharged a dozen times a year, 
without the slightest protest from anyone, by the refusals of 
Ministers to answer Parliamentary questions on pending nego- 
tiations. Here there was, in the Minister's view, a paramount 
public necessity, a national and international need of con- 
cealing the fact that any negotiations had taken place at all ; 
and it is, therefore, the means of concealment which are alone 
open to question. Lord Salisbury, in short, might well refuse 
to plead to any but those straightforward censors who, while 
admitting a Foreign Minister's general right to preserve 
the secrecy of negotiations, deny that he can be justified 
under any circumstances, in constructively denying their 
existence. 

The question is one which lies outside the ordinary 
ethics of private conduct, and belongs to the casuistry of 
public duty. That it is one on which people may fairly 
agree to differ will be admitted, I think, by all save those who 
have wholly failed to appreciate its difficulties. It should 
suffice to remind these last that when A asks B for information 
which he has no right to obtain, and when silence, on the 
part of B, would amount to giving A that information to which 
he has no right, a situation arises in which such a reply as 
Lord Salisbury's finds precedent in an answer given in analo- 
gous circumstances by a man of honour so unimpeachable as 
Sir Walter Scott. And for my own part, I do not hesitate to 
avow my opinion that a statesman who, so situated, should 
deliberately prefer to sacrifice what he conceived to be the 
highest interests of State to his private scruples, would 
deserve that his head should be first crowned for his fidelity 



THE BERLIN SETTLEMENT I77 

to his own conscience, and then struck off for treason to his 
country. 

Of the terms of the settlement so procured we can judge 
more fairly to-day than it was possible to do at the date of 
its conclusion. Even at that date, indeed, no doubt of its 
merits found entrance into the popular mind. The two 
plenipotentiaries who returned home bringing Peace with 
Honour were enthusiastically received by their countrymen, 
and were rewarded with the highest honour, other than 
promotion in the peerage, which it is in the power of the 
Sovereign to bestow. The disappointment with w^hich the 
settlement was received by a certain section of the public 
we now see to have been due in part to imperfect knowledge 
of the conditions under which it was effected, and to an 
inaccurate forecast of the consequences to which it 
would lead. It was assumed by these critics that Russia 
might have been forced by an adequate display of ' firmness ' 
to resign more than she did of the military and political 
fruits of her victories ; and both the gains secured by her 
and the loss immediate and prospective sustained by 
Turkey in respect of the advantages actually retained by 
Russia were much overrated. 

In an able despatch addressed to the Minister from 
whom he had formally received his instructions, as well 
as in more than one vigorous speech in the House of 
Lords and elsewhere. Lord Salisbury insisted, and, as most 
of us would now admit, with success, on the satisfactoriness 
of the settlement. It was not the fact, his vindication con- 
vincingly showed, that Russia had made only slight or trivial 
concessions. The main question in issue was whether she 
should be allowed to plant a new independent province 
subservient to her influence at the Sultan's very doors ; and 

N 



1/8 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

on this vital point — a point of far more importance than that 
conceded to her in the strip of Bessarabian territory — she 
had been forced to give way. The 'Great Bulgaria,' 
extending from Salonica to Adrianople, and, with Servia and 
Montenegro, stretching a Slav Principality from the Black 
Sea to the Adriatic, had been pushed back from Salonica 
and Adrianople, and thrust behind the Balkans, which were 
left in the military occupation of the Porte. 

Looked at from the negative side alone, and regarded 
as the rescue of Europe from a much more dangerous 
arrangement, this was unquestionably a great exploit to 
achieve without war ; and if its positive advantages in 
erecting a barrier to the Russian advance may seem to 
be still somewhat overrated by Lord Salisbury, they are 
certainly more substantial than his opponents of that day 
admitted. The Berlin treaty has already nearly attained 
to the years of the Black Sea clauses of the treaty of 1856 
when they were forcibly repudiated by Russia ; yet that 
Power has, so far, not succeeded in modifying the Bulgarian 
arrangement to her advantage, but has, if anything, had to 
forego some of its expected benefits. 

The troubles and anxieties incidental to the Eastern 
Question did not end for England or for the Foreign 
Secretary with the Settlement of Berlin. On the contrary, 
their direct pressure upon this country and its Government 
was only then beginning. Scarcely a month had elapsed 
after the signature of the Berlin Treaty when it became 
known in England that Shere Ali, the Ameer of Afghanistan 
had received a Russian mission at Cabul. At any moment, 
and with any ruler occupying the Afghan throne, a piece of 
intelligence like this would have created uneasiness, but in 



SHERE ALI 179 

this instance not only a cause of anxiety but an impulse to 
action were supplied alike by the circumstances of the time 
and by the character of the man. The Russian mission 
had been despatched and received during that fateful period 
in the spring of the year when the question of peace or war 
between Russia and England was trembling in the balance ; 
and the potentate who admitted it had the year before 
inflexibly refused, on pleas now proved to be pretexts, to 
receive a mission from the Government of India. 

To the probability thus indicated that the Ameer had 
definitively cast in his lot with our Asiatic rival — a pro- 
bability notably strengthened by the fact of the ill-will with 
which Shere Ali was known to regard the British Power 
— it was impossible for Ministers to remain indifferent. 
The Viceroy, acting under instructions from the India 
Office, dispatched a mission under Sir Nevile Chamberlain, 
and accompanied by an armed escort about a thousand 
strong, to the frontier, while a communication was addressed 
to the Ameer inviting him to admit it to his capital. Sir 
Nevile Chamberlain and his force reached Jumrood, on 
the Afghan frontier, on September 22, and Major Cavagnari 
was sent forward to Ali Musjid to ask for a safe con- 
duct through the pass. The commandant of that fort, 
however, replied that he had no orders to let an armed 
mission through, and threatened to fire on the British force 
if they attempted to proceed. 

Upon this the mission returned to Peshawur, and for 
nearly two months the British Government vainly strove 
to procure Shere All's compliance with their demand— in 
itself a sufficient answer to their pohtical opponents' charges 
against them of having forced a war. Naturally and 
properly, however, the Indian military authorities pushed 

N 3 



l8o THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

on their warlike preparations with vigour, and at last, on 
November 2, an ultimatum was addressed to the Ameer, 
setting forth in explicit terms the consequences of a per- 
sistent refusal to admit a British mission, and giving him till 
November 20 to recall that refusal and signify his willingness 
to receive Sir Nevile Chamberlain. To this no answer was 
sent, and at dawn of the prescribed day the British forces 
advanced into Afghanistan. 

To recount the history of the Afghan campaign is 
beyond the scope of the present volume, which is only 
concerned with that war in its relations with the diplomacy 
which preceded it during Lord Salisbury's tenure of the 
Indian Secretariat. The outbreak of the struggle rendered 
it necessary to summon Parliament for a winter session, 
and the two Houses met on December 5. In the mean- 
time, the policy of the India Office had been vehemently 
challenged, and the late head of that department was put 
upon his defence in the debate on the Address. It was alleged 
that he had picked a quarrel with the Ameer ; that he had 
incited the Viceroy to seek occasion against him ; that he 
had attempted to ' force an envoy on him at Cabul ' ; and, 
most serious of all, that while engaged in the last-mentioned 
endeavour, he had deceived Parliament by misrepresenta- 
tions of the policy which he was pursuing. 

To both the personal and the political charge Lord Salis- 
bury's answer was complete. He showed that the proximate 
cause of the w^ar — the refusal to admit our mission — was 
merely the outward manifestation of a long smouldering 
hostility towards the Government of India in the mind of 
Shere Ali ; that the original estrangement which begot this 
hostile feeling was of older date than the accession of Lord 
Beaconsfield's Government to power ; and that the un- 



AFGHAN POLICY l8l 

satisfactory relations with Afghanistan which he had found 
in existence on assuming the direction of the India Ofifice 
were a legacy from the administration of his predecessor. 

The personal charge was still more easily refuted. It 
had been alleged that, in replying to a question put to him 
on June ii, 1877, he had stated that there had been no 
change of policy as regards Afghanistan, and that he had, 
contrary to what was the fact, denied that the British 
Government had attempted ' to force an envoy on the 
Ameer at Cabul.' Lord Salisbury now showed that the 
former statement, which would have been false, had never 
been made by him, and that the latter, which had been 
made, was true. Our relations with the Ameer of Cabul 
might have changed, and indeed had changed, before the 
summer of 1877, but the policy of the British Government 
towards him remained unaltered, and no attempt had been 
made to plant a British envoy at Cabul. What had been 
made — and the materiality of the distinction between the 
two demands Lord Salisbury had no difficulty in point- 
ing out — was a suggestion that the Ameer should admit a 
British representative not to Cabul, but to Herat. 

If any mistake had arisen on these points, it was to 
be attributed to the special circumstances under which 
the then Secretary for India had replied to the questions 
addressed to him. ' The circumstances of the time were 
difficult in the extreme. Russia was in arms ; great 
irritation prevailed ; no one knew whether the war would 
not spread much farther than its original area ; ' and, in 
short, the whole situation as it presented itself to the 
Government, at the moment when the then Secretary for 
India was plied with these untimely inquiries as to our 
relations with Afghanistan, enjoined the strictest reserve. 



1 82 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

' Consequently,' continued Lord Salisbury, ' I told the noble 
Duke (Argyll) that I could not give him much positive but 
only negative information. That negative information was 
that we had not tried to force an envoy on the Ameer at 
Cabul, and that we had not suggested Sir Lewis Pelly as an 
envoy at Cabul. Now I want to know why the noble Earl 
opposite (Granville) insinuates that I said anything contrary 
to the most perfect truth in the reply I made to the noble 
Duke. The noble Earl talked of my having stated that 
there had been no change of policy as regards Afghanistan. 
I must charitably suppose that the noble Earl spoke 
without having taken the trouble to read the speech to 
which he referred. There is no such statement in that 
speech.' 

With this challenge of his frontier policy and his 
response to it, Lord Salisbury's individual connection with 
the Afghan Question ends. Events in Afghanistan ran 
their predestined course — a course discreditable in some 
measure to our administrative dispositions, but not inglo- 
rious for our arms — throughout the year 1879. Early in 
1880 Lord Beaconsfield's Government submitted the ac- 
count of their six years' stewardship to the audit of their 
country. 

The closing months of the previous year had been 
signalised by what is now known to history as the ' Mid- 
lothian Campaign,' a 'passionate pilgrimage' of Mr. Glad- 
stone's from London to the North, commencing with brief 
tirades against his adversaries at every important railway 
station on the route, and concluding with a series of 
elaborately imperative harangues ' to the same address ' at 
the principal local centres of his extensive constituency. 
It was one long denunciation of the Government and all 



THE REWARD OF THE GOVERNMENT 1 83 

their works abroad : in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa ; 
among the Christian populations of the East, the tribes of 
the North- West Indian frontier, and the Boers of the Trans- 
vaal : it was all this, coupled with a pledge that, if returned 
to power, Mr. Gladstone, so far as in him lay, and the 
circumstances permitted, would undo all that had been 
done by his predecessors. 

By April i, 1880, the main result of the election had 
declared itself, and it was found that the Ministers who, in 
the most formidable crisis of the last half century, had upheld 
the honour and interests of the country and steered it 
clear of a terrible European war, had been sent by their 
countrymen about their business. Their Slavophil opponents, 
of course, were jubilant, and loudly acclaimed the verdict 
as a just and righteous condemnation of the cynical im- 
morality of a Government which had dared to rank the 
interests of the country above the claims of the ' rising 
nationalities of Eastern Europe.' The Conservatives as a 
party did not quite beheve this, but they were a little at a 
loss to know what to believe in its place. Many explana- 
tions of the defeat of a Government which had undoubtedly 
deserved well of the nation were offered, but with varying 
acceptance. It was the Afghan War ; it was the military 
blundering in South Africa ; it was the alienation of the 
Church by the Public Worship Act ; it was this, it was that, 
it was the other. 

Yet the true reason must have suggested itself to one 
of the two Ministers who brought back Peace with Honour, 
and may have suggested itself to his colleague. Lord 
Salisbury and Lord Beaconsfield, the foremost opponent of 
the Reform Act of 1867, and the author, or part author, of 
that measure, might have been conscious in common as 



1 84 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

thej' looked at each other, thatthis shocking display of national 
ingratitude had a disastrously simple explanation, and was 
but the natural and inevitable consequence of deliberately 
committing the destinies of the country to the hands of 
Ignorance and Caprice. 



/ 



185 



CHAPTER XII 

Mr. Gladstone's ' little bills ' — Compensation for disturbance — Death of 
Lord Beaconsfield — Lord Salisbury chosen leader of the Conserva- 
tive peers — His tactics — The Kilmainham Treaty and Arrears Bill 
— A chance missed— The Franchise Bill — Fall of Khartoum and 
escape of the Government — The Spirit Duties and fall of the Govern- 
ment — Lord Salisbury Prime Minister— His Cabinet — Dissolution 
and new Parliament — Eighty-six Irish votes, three acres, and a cow 
— Mr. Gladstone in office again — ' Examination and inquiry ' — 
The Home Rule Bill — Its defeat — Dissolution and its results. 

Having purchased victory over their opponents by the un- 
precedented outlay in pledges and promises above recorded, 
and having duly received delivery of its fruits in the form 
of office, nothing now remained for the new Government 
but to pay the bill. The account against them at home and 
abroad, in Ireland, in India, in South Africa, was a heavy 
one. They had denounced the policy of their predecessors 
in three out of four quarters of the world, and had either 
given express assurances or raised the strongest hopes that 
they would make it their first business to reverse it. They 
had derided Lord Beaconsfield's prognostications of Irish 
trouble ; they had protested step by step against the pro- 
ceedings of his Government in Afghanistan ; their leader had 
in his most eloquent fashion denounced the annexation of the 
Transvaal. Ireland was the first to present her little account, 
and the new Administration made payment by permitting a 



1 86 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Peace Preservation Act to lapse, and by introducing a Bill 
to entitle tenants who were evicted for nonpayment of rent 
to ' compensation for disturbance.' 

The measure was opposed with much vigour in the 
House of Commons, and finally passed in that assembly by 
hardly more than half the normal Ministerial majority, 
reckoning Irish votes. This startling reduction in the 
number of supporters of a Government which had been less 
than three months in office, and which had already lost one 
of its subordinate members, Lord Lansdowne, by introducing 
this Bill, must have prepared most people for its fate in the 
House of Lords. Its rejection was moved in that House by 
an aged and much respected peer. Lord Grey, and it obtained 
no independent support of the slightest weight from anyone 
but Lord Derby, who, as usual, recommended a surrender, 
on the general principle that any measure passed by the 
House of Commons ought to be accepted by the Lords. 

Lord Salisbury, as might have been expected, ener- 
getically opposed the Bill, and in the course of his speech 
delivered himself of a pungent criticism on certain charac- 
teristics of the measure which had not escaped animadver- 
sion in the Lower House ; to wit, the singular ambiguity 
of its provisions, and the extreme uncertainty of its opera- 
tion. ' Nothing,' he remarked, ' can be more puzzling than 
its original genesis. We do not know who suggested it, 
who produced it, or who approved of it. In its course 
through Parliament it was never possible to predict from 
day to day what new form it would assume. Now that we 
have it, it is full of expressions which the boldest man 
would not venture to interpret.' 

He went on, not for the first time, to rebuke the 
pusillanimous counsels of Lord Derby by protesting, as he 



THE DISTURBANCE BILL 1 8/ 

had done on a previous occasion, that in giving his vote he 
dechned ' to ask with the noble earl what would be thought 
of the action of the House of Lords out of doors. The motto 
for the House of Lords should be, " Be just and fear not," 
and be sure that if you fear you will not long be just.' The 
Bill was rejected by 282 votes against 51 ; and although it was 
observed at the time that an actual majority of the ordinary 
supporters of the Government voted with the non-contents, 
this did not prevent the disappointed Radicals from raising 
an outcry against the action of the Opposition in the Upper 
House. 

It would be hard, however, to grudge them this rhetori- 
cal refuge ; for the calamities which their policy was bringing 
upon Ireland were now plain and imminent enough to create 
an immediate necessity for shifting to the shoulders of other 
people the responsibility for having caused them. The 
Government and their followers caught eagerly at the idea 
of substituting the rejection of the Disturbance Bill for the 
abandonment of the Peace Preservation Act as the real 
originant of Irish disorder. If only — their theory seems to 
have been, though of course they did not put it quite so plainly 
— if only the Lords had allowed a certain number of evicted 
insolvent tenants to demand compensation for their eviction, 
the much larger number of tenants who would neither pay 
nor quit unless removed by force, and whom Mr. Parnell 
and his fellow agitators had been long and loudly inciting 
to stay where they were and ' hold the harvest,' would have 
meekly evacuated their farms. There would have been no 
moonlighting and no boycotting, no murders of landlords 
or agents, no mutilation of cattle or shattering of old 
men's legs with rusty slugs. Ireland would have again sunk 
to rest and Fenians would have ceased from troubling — if 



1 88 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

only the Lords had been willing to pass the Compensation 
for Disturbance Bill. 

Meanwhile the ' village ruffian,' as Mr. Forster had not 
yet begun to call him, was supplying them with continual 
and multiplying occasion for the exercise of their ingenuity. 
Throughout the long session of 1880 affairs in Ireland were 
going from bad to worse, and the tale of agrarian outrage 
lengthened week by week. Parliament was prorogued on 
September i, and a fortnight or so later Lord Mountmorres 
was shot dead within a few hundred yards of his own house 
in Galway. The demand for a reinforcement of Executive 
authority in Ireland began to make itself felt in the other 
parts of the United Kingdom, and in a speech at Taunton 
in October Lord Salisbury gave effective voice to it. 

Ministers, however, were strangely slow to move, and 
though some reluctance to ' reverse ' their policy might be 
expected and perhaps pardoned in men who, immediately 
on their accession to office had, with such complacent 
alacrity, reversed that of their predecessors in this very 
matter, their hesitation appeared to be of too pronounced 
a character to be attributable to this cause alone. An in- 
fluential member of the Cabinet had been assiduously 
preaching the doctrine that ' force was no remedy' — an obser- 
vation equally applicable to a strait-waistcoat, which is, how- 
ever, an appliance not yet banished from the most efficient 
and enlightened hospitals for the treatment of the insane — 
and it was more than suspected that the sentimental pre- 
possessions which inspire rhetorical commonplaces of this 
description were exercising too great an influence over the 
Government. But there were other than sentimental 
motives for inaction, and Lord Salisbury was the first public 
speaker of importance who had the acuteness to perceive 



BIRMINGHAM IN THE CABINET 1 89 

and the bluntness to point them out. Some other consider- 
ation, he said, must have enhsted the ' Birmingham members 
of the Cabinet ' on the side of outrage and disorder. 

Crime and outrage, though very disagreeable to the persons 
who live in the midst of them, have a Parliamentary value. A 
Land Bill, especially if it contained confiscatory clauses, would 
fall very flat if there were no disturbance in Ireland. The 
longer the disturbance continues the fiercer it becomes, and the 
more cause there will seem to be for exceptional legislation 
next session ; and if there are members of the Government, as 
I suspect there are, who have some pet project, some darling 
theory to promote, they will wish for that state of things which 
will furnish the argument that will best serve to establish their 
theories. On the other hand, if the landlords are delivered 
over for the winter to the tender mercies of the Land League, 
it may be hoped that they will be more pliable next spring, and 
will offer their fleeces more readily to the shearer that may de- 
sire to shear them. In other words, the present state of Ireland, 
all the anarchy and all the crime committed in that country, are 
so many arguments for future legislation. Every person who 
is shot, or evicted, or branded, or tarred and feathered, contributes 
to bring revolutionary principles with regard to the land of 
Ireland within the range of practical pohtics. His example will 
have its effect, as the Clerkenwell outrage had, on the mind of 
Mr. Gladstone. 

To anybody who did not know for what moral enormities 
the English party system is responsible, the charge here 
conveyed might seem almost too grave for one politician to 
bring against another. Its substantial truth, however, has 
been since actually admitted by Mr. Chamberlain. 

By the end of the year 1880 it seems to have been con- 
sidered by that section of the Cabinet which was most 
disposed to ' heroic ' legislation, that they had now ' got up 
steam enough,' and that a touch of coercion might be 



I90 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

permitted with a view to clinching the case for a ' remedial 
measure' to follow. Parliament was summoned a month 
earlier than the usual time, and immediately upon the voting 
of the Address, that is in the last week in January, Mr. 
Forster introduced his very stringent Protection Bill, which, 
after furious opposition from the Irish Party, requiring on one 
occasion to be overcome by a sort of coup d'etat on the part 
of the Speaker, was sent to the Lords at the end of February, 
and by them, of course, expeditiously passed. 

The great 'remedial measure,' however, hung fire for 
some weeks. It was not until April 7 that Mr. Gladstone, 
after ' shedding ' another member of his Government, a 
Cabinet Minister this time, was able to introduce his Land 
Bill, and long before it reached the Upper House Lord 
Salisbury's position had undergone an important change. 

On April 19, at the height of his fame and influence, 
Lord Beaconsfield passed away. He did not live to see the 
issue of his rival's disastrous adventures in the business of re- 
versing his policy, but they had been entered upon not only 
in Ireland but elsewhere before his decease. Mr. Gladstone's 
Asiatic and South African ' acceptances ' fell due in the early 
days of 1881, the maturity of the latter being accelerated by 
the defeat of Majuba Hill, and Lord Beaconsfield's last illness 
attacked him, as a matter of fact, in the interval between two 
Gladstonian capitulations. His last speech in the House of 
Lords was a protest against the retirement from Candahar. 
When Lord Cairns's impassioned denunciation, powerfully 
seconded by Lord Salisbury, of the surrender of the Trans- 
vaal was delivered in the House of Lords, their leader had 
already been laid for some days on that sick bed from which 
he was to rise no more. 

The sorrow which Lord Beaconsfield's death occasioned 



THE VACANCY IN THE LEADERSHIP 191 

and which displayed itself with such impressive unanimity 
among all classes of Englishmen, was aggravated among the 
members of the deceased statesman's party by a sense of 
grave political loss. Lord Beaconsfield's physical powers 
had it is true been for some time failing, and had he been 
spared, it was unlikely that he would ever again have played 
so energetic a part as formerly in the battle of politics. But 
his followers knew that so long as he retained the full vigour 
of his mental faculties — and they had as yet shown no 
symptoms of decay — the value of the services which he 
could render them would remain almost unimpaired. The 
modern Conservative party was his creation and had been 
his care ; he had sustained it in adversity, led it to victory, 
ennobled and adorned its records with his own renown, and 
it would in any case have been no light matter for its 
members to be suddenly called upon to replace the only 
leader -whom the New Conservatism had ever known. 

But in this instance the difficulty of the party was most 
gravely enhanced by the circumstance that the departed 
chief had left behind him no acknowledged or visibly desig- 
nated successor. At the last demise of the leadership, which 
moreover had been simplified by the fact that the Conserva- 
tives were then in power, the case had been different. Mr. 
Disraeli's title to lead the Tory party in the House of 
Commons had been admitted grudgingly enough in the 
earlier stages of his career ; but by the time when Lord 
Derby's resignation opened the way for him to the highest 
office of the State, all murmurs of revolt against his authority 
had long died away. He was recognised then as the only 
possible successor of the retiring leader. At his own 
death there was no member of the party in that position. 
There would have been no unanimous or virtually unani- 



192 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

mous answer to the question, Whom should her Majesty 
be expected to ' send for,' if at that moment the Govern- 
ment in power were compelled by the adverse vote of the 
House of Commons to resign office ? 

On the other hand it was not immediately necessary at 
that moment to fill Lord Beaconsfield's place at all. The 
first thing to do was to select a successor to him in the 
leadership of the House of Lords ; and while it was 
obviously not for that House to force upon the Commons 
the leader so selected as the chief of the whole party, so on 
the other hand it was not for the Commons to attempt to 
dictate their selection to the House of Lords with the view 
of replacing Lord Beaconsfield in his wider authority by 
some persona grata to themselves. Hence the arrangement 
of the 'Dual Control,' which afterwards became the subject 
of such vivacious criticism, was in reality the creation of 
necessity. It would have been quite out of the question to 
have attempted to place the new leader of the Conservative 
peers, whoever he might be, over the respected head of Sir 
Stafford Northcote in the general councils of the party, and 
the question of the moment therefore became simply that of 
appointing to the leadership of the House of Lords. 

Even for this post, however, the choice was not alto- 
gether so easy then, as after the lapse of ten years it seems 
now. For although, even then, there were few, if any, 
to dispute Lord Salisbury's pre-eminence in ability, there 
were still those who questioned his other qualifications for 
command. Old prejudices against him, dating some from 
the time of the Constantinople Conference, others from an 
earlier period, still survived. There were those who com- 
plained of his want of 'popular sympathies,' of his ' aristo- 
cratic hauteur.' Others anticipated and dreaded rashness 



SUCCEEDS TO LEADERSHIP I93 

in his political tactics, or impatience and want of tact in his 
dealings with men. And in the meanwhile the organs of 
the Ministerial press almost without exception were urging 
his claims to the leadership with a suspicious zeal, and 
giving fresh colour every day to the charge that they were 
striving to provide their Conservative adversaries with the 
best leader — for their Liberal selves. 

On the whole, therefore, it is not surprising that certain 
outside critics of the situation were disposed to look elsewhere 
for a successor to the late chief, and that, Lord Salisbury's 
only real rival in point of eloquence and ability, Lord 
Cairns, being for various reasons ineligible, they should have 
favoured the cautious course of selecting some respected 
and unambitious politician of the second rank, such as the 
Duke of Richmond, for at any rate the temporary occupa- 
tion of the vacant office. The event, however, afforded 
a signal illustration of the disadvantages under which 
'outsiders' must always labour in the discussion of a 
matter of this kind. It turned out on inquiry that the 
misgivings which Lord Salisbury's name and personality in- 
spired in those anxious minds were not shared by those 
who knew him best. There was a great preponderance of 
feeling in his favour among the members of his party, and 
at a meeting of Conservative peers held on May g, at which 
over a hundred were present, he was, on the motion of the 
Duke of Richmond, seconded by Lord Cairns, unanimously 
chosen as Lord Beaconsfield's successor in the House of 
Lords. Nor will even his adversaries be prepared, one may 
presume, to deny that by his display not only of the 
brilliant gifts which he was known to possess, but of many 
of the soHd qualities which his detractors denied him, he has 
abundantly justified the choice. 



194 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Assuredly it is not on the ground of rashness that any 
exception can be taken to his Parhamentary tactics. From 
1 88 1 onwards the disastrous career of the Government 
simply abounded in provocations to an Opposition leader 
to precipitate a crisis by means of the resolute use of his 
majority in the House of Lords. The Land Act of the year 
above mentioned was a measure so violently hostile to every 
principle, equitable or economical, which had hitherto 
governed English legislation, that its rejection on the second 
reading would have been thoroughly justifiable from the 
Conservative point of view. Lord Salisbury, however, ad- 
vised the peers to accept its principle — if principle it could 
be called — and to be content with endeavouring to amend 
some of its more mischievous provisions. 

Assuredly there was no sign here of the impetuosity and 
'proud precipitance of soul' which it pleased his oppo- 
nents to attribute to Lord Salisbury. Neither was there 
in the attitude of critical reserve which he maintained, and 
induced the Lords to maintain generally, throughout that 
protracted drama of blunder and bloodshed which is known 
to history as the second Gladstone Administration. Never- 
theless the criticism, which was passed upon the leadership 
of the Conservatives between 1881 and 1885, by no incon- 
siderable section of the party, was that it was wanting in 
courage and initiative, and that on more than one occasion 
it lamentably missed its chances. 

For one such miss, however. Lord Salisbury cannot 
be held responsible. The Dual leadership, though an un- 
avoidable, was certainly not a wholly satisfactory arrange- 
ment, and the many admirable gifts of Sir Stafford Northcote 
certainly did not include those which are necessary to a 
'fighting' leader of Opposition. The ruinous collapse of 



A CHANCE MISSED I95 

the Ministerial policy in Ireland in the spring of 1882, 
acknowledged and accompanied as it was by the virtual 
expulsion of Mr. Forster from office and the ignominious 
surrender to the imprisoned agitators in Kilmainham, 
and followed by the tragedy in the Phoenix Park, did 
undoubtedly afford one of those opportunities which if 
promptly and vigorously seized upon in both Houses of 
Parliament might quite conceivably have been used to 
force an appeal to the constituencies. 

Yet the chance was lost, not only in the House of 
Commons, but also, though not by Lord Salisbury's fault, 
in the House of Lords. Sir Stafford Northcote practically 
resigned to Lord Randolph Churchill and his handful of 
followers the control of party action in the business of 
the Kilmainham Treaty ; while e converse Lord Salisbury 
was deserted by his party at a moment when, if they had 
stood by him, they might have succeeded in calling the 
Government at once to national account. The Arrears Bill 
was an integral part of the Kilmainham compact. By 
insisting, as Lord Salisbury desired to insist, on the amend- 
ment introduced in the Lords and disagreed to by the 
Commons, the Bill would have been defeated ; and thus on 
the issue raised by the Irish policy of the Government, then 
at its lowest point of discredit. Ministers would have been 
directly challenged to take the opinion of the country. 

Two causes, however, one creditable, the other less so, 
operated to produce revolt among the Conservative peers. 
The Irish landlords in the House of Lords were tempted by 
the offer of money from the Exchequer in satisfaction of at 
least some of their long-standing arrears, while other peers 
were doubtless influenced by considerations — to the weight 
of which their leader had himself done justice in his speech on 



196. THE MARQUIS OF SALISBUR'^' 

the second reading — of the gravity of affairs in Egypt. For 
the Government then in power may be almost said to have 
invented a new mode of securing political impunity. They 
evaded the consequences of domestic blunder by involving 
us in such serious difficulties abroad, that the nation was too 
much engrossed in the work of self-extrication to have any 
leisure to spare for the function of punishment. It was the 
summer of 1882 that witnessed the commencement of those 
Egyptian troubles which were destined to dog the footsteps 
of Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues throughout their whole 
term of office, and during the year 1883 there was little 
for an Opposition to do but sit idly by and allow fate to 
work even more potently for them than they could possibly 
work for themselves. 

But in the summer of 1884 the fortunes of the Govern- 
ment were approaching a crisis both at home and abroad ; 
and looking back upon the situation, it seems difficult to 
doubt that now was the time for their opponents to have 
co-operated with Nemesis. The position of matters in the 
Soudan and the situation of General Gordon were exciting 
the gravest anxiety in all minds save apparently those of the 
Government and their infatuated partisans. Long months 
had elapsed during which the Opposition had vainly striven 
to rouse Mr. Gladstone from the apathy with which he 
viewed the obviously pressing needs of the devoted soldier 
whom he himself had placed at his post of peril. Mid- 
summer had come and passed, and Lord Wolseley's long- 
delayed mission of rescue had not yet been resolved upon. 
Meanwhile a Franchise Bill, unaccompanied by any measure 
of redistribution or any information as to what such a 
measure would contain, was introduced into the House of 
Commons, and it was known that it would be submitted in 



THE LORDS AND THE FRANCHISE BILL 197 

the same uncommunicative temper to the House of Lords. 
Consistently no doubt with the attitude which since the 
passing of the Reform Act of 1867 the Conservatives and 
their leader had always maintained towards the franchise 
question, Lord Salisbury accepted the principle of the new 
Bill, but the form in which it was offered and the refusal 
of the Government to furnish the all-important details 
of redistribution, supplied the Conservative peers with a 
perfectly legitimate casus belli. 

There was talk of their passing a resolution to adjourn 
the consideration of the Franchise Bill for a period of 
some months, as a mode of putting pressure upon the 
Government to produce their Redistribution Bill ; and had 
they adopted this or some similar course, or otherwise 
' played for ' a defeat of the measure and a dissolution to 
take effect in the spring of the following year, it is far from 
impossible that the whole subsequent course of our history 
might have been changed. For in February of 1885 Khar- 
toum fell, and it would have been with the sting of that 
disaster rankling in the mind of every Englishman, and its 
shame burning upon his cheek, that the elections would 
have taken place. 

What led to the abandonment of this plan of tactics, 
which was certainly for some time entertained, one knows 
not ; but abandoned it was. The Conservative majority in 
the Upper House appears to have lacked the courage to 
play the ' great game ' ; but it is only fair to them and to 
their leaders to admit that the game which they did elect to 
play was conducted with consummate tact and skill. On 
the motion for the second reading of the Franchise Bill, an 
amendment moved by Lord Cairns to the effect that the 
House, ' while concurring in the extension of the franchise. 



198 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

could not consent to a measure which was not accompanied 
by provisions for so apportioning the right to return 
members as to ensure a true and fair representation of the 
people, or by any adequate security that the Franchise Bill 
should not come into operation except as part of an entire 
scheme,' was carried by a majority of fifty-nine. 

This resolution did not render it imperative on the 
Government to withdraw the Franchise Bill, but for reasons 
which will readily suggest themselves, they thought fit to 
do so. The measure was abandoned, with an announcement 
that an autumn session would be held for the purpose of 
reintroducing it ; and the interval between the summer 
and autumn sessions was, of course, spent in the pro- 
secution of a noisy agitation against the House of Lords. 
The peers, however, unshrinkingly maintained their posi- 
tion, and their firmness was rewarded in the following Octo- 
ber by the reappearance of Ministers and MinisteriaHsts at 
Westminster in a far less overbearing mood. A compromise 
between the leaders of the two parties was speedily arranged, 
and the Government consented not only to introduce a Re- 
distribution Bill, but even to modify their original redistri- 
bution proposals to meet the wishes of the Conservative 
leaders. The conciliatory spirit thus displayed by them de- 
serves a commendation which would have been warmer if 
it had been earlier earned ; but the honours of the transaction 
belong of right to the Conservative leader whose judgment 
and resolution enabled the House of Lords to maintain its 
constitutional authority, to uphold the principle of just and 
straightforward legislation, and to teach a much needed 
lesson to political agitators. 

On February 19, 1885, about a fortnight after the news 
of the fall of Khartoum and the death of our betrayed hero, 



SUMMONED BY THE QUEEN 199 

Gordon, had reached this country, Parliament assembled. 
In the course of the next fortnight a motion of censure on 
the Government was proposed by Lord Salisbury in the 
House of Lords, and carried by 169 against 68 votes ; 
but another motion to the same effect introduced in the 
House of Commons by Sir Stafford Northcote, was 
defeated by a majority of 14. On June 8 the Liberal 
majority which had acquitted them on the charge of 
sacrificing Gordon and tarnishing the national honour, 
found them guilty of the graver offence of proposing the 
levy of a shilling duty on spirits and a proportionate in- 
crease of the tax on beer, whereupon a certain section of 
Mr. Gladstone's followers deserted him, and these brought 
about the defeat of the Government on a division. It was 
a ground of punishment ignoble enough to be worthy alike 
of the culprit and the executioner. 

The question of precedence between the leaders of 
the Conservative party in the two Houses respectively 
— a question by which certain minds appeared, though 
no doubt with little reason, to be still exercised — was 
promptly determined by the summons of Lord Salisbury 
to an audience of the Sovereign. There were those who 
doubted whether he should not, and some who questioned 
whether in fact he would not, beg to be relieved of the duty 
of forming a Government ; and there was, as usual in such 
cases, plenty to be said on either side, from the point of 
view both of national and of party advantage. But it is of 
course well known — it would indeed be affectation to 
ignore the fact — that a leader situated as was Lord 
Salisbury has a third consideration to take into account ; 
that his principal followers have personal claims, legiti- 
mate enough within certain recognised limits of political 



200 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

ambition, which, if the public interests served by either 
course appear fairly balanced, he is bound to satisfy. 

Lord Salisbury, after some negotiation with the Leader 
of the Opposition as to the attitude to be maintained 
towards the new Government by the majority in the House 
of Commons during the period which had to elapse before 
the dissolution, consented to accept office, and himself 
assumed the position of Foreign Secretary in conjunction 
with that of First Lord of the Treasury. The question of 
the leadership of the House of Commons was settled by 
the elevation of Sir Stafford Northcote to the peerage and 
the promotion of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach to the post 
which Lord Iddesleigh had so long and so honourably filled. 
Lord Randolph Churchill became Secretary for India, while 
his adherents and other nominees of his were adequately, 
and as some thought more than adequately, rewarded by 
posts in the new Government. 

The five months which had still to elapse before the 
appeal to the constituencies were fully occupied in what may 
be described, with due apology for the homeliness of the 
metaphor, as ' cleaning up after Mr. Gladstone.' The crop 
of interriational difficulties which that illustrious statesman 
usually leaves behind him as an ' outgoing tenant ' of 
Ministerial office was especially luxuriant on this occasion, 
and his successor's time was fully occupied during the 
autumn of 1885 in disposing of these undesirable ' emble- 
ments.' There was a troublesome dispute with Russia in 
Central Asia to be dealt with, a dispute which had gone 
near to involve the two countries in war, and would actually 
have done so if the late Government had not timely 
perceived the necessity of qualifying undue valour of 
language by excessive discretion of behaviour ; and, to say 



ELECTION OF I885 201 

nothing of the still smouldering ashes of strife in South 
Africa, or of the new pre-occupations which were being pre- 
pared for us by German rivalry on the East Coast of that 
continent, the Egyptian imbroglio was just then in its 
most perplexing and threatening condition. 

Of the first difficulty Lord Salisbury was able to rid us 
altogether. An amicable arrangement was arrived at with 
Russia with respect to the delimitation dispute on the 
Afghan frontier, and the foundations were laid of a better 
understanding between the two great partitioners of Asiatic 
power than they had known for years. The re-establish- 
ment of our prestige in Egypt was, of course, a longer 
business ; but a beginning had to be made, and a sensible 
improvement in Egyptian affairs had already begun to 
manifest itself when Parliament was dissolved. 

The issue of the General Election eloquently testified 
to the magnitude of the tactical loss which the Conser- 
vative party had sustained by permitting their adversaries 
to carry a Franchise Bill. Assentient though the former 
party were to the principle of that measure, they had a 
perfect constitutional right to insist that the old electorate 
should be consulted on more than one important question 
which arose in connection with it ; and had they forced 
Mr. Gladstone to go to the old electorate he would in all 
human probability have been handsomely beaten. Even 
as it was, the remodelled English borough constituencies 
put him in an actual minority ; nor was it until the new 
rural electors — the ' talesmen ' so to speak, whom he had 
brought into the constitutional jury-box specially suborned 
by the bribe of * three acres and a cow,' to acquit him on 
his foreign policy — went to the polls, that the balance was 
redressed. These men saved him and his followers from 



202 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Utter rout. When the final returns were made up, it 
appeared that the two Enghsh parties were within a few 
votes of being equally balanced, and that the mastery of the 
situation — except in so far as these two parties could bring 
themselves to unite in order to deprive him of it — rested 
with Mr. Parnell and his compact and well-disciplined army 
of 86 Irish representatives pledged to the disruption of 
the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland. 

On the agitating, the almost breathless, history of the 
next six months I am not called upon to dwell. The 
momentous drama was enacted almost wholly in the House 
of Commons, and except in so far as his counsels may have 
privately governed the Parliamentary action of his followers 
during the crisis, Lord Salisbury took no direct part in 
events. Their chronicle may be practically summed up in 
a calendar of some half-dozen dates. It was in November, 
just before the elections, that Mr. Gladstone had adjured 
the constituencies to return not only a Liberal majority, but 
one so considerable as to render the party independent of 
the Irish Nationalist vote — suggesting and indeed as good 
as avowing that if that vote were necessary to them for the 
recovery of office, they could scarcely be expected not to 
truck the interests of the United Kingdom against it ; and 
implying e converso that if they were made independent of 
that vote they would over-ride it wherever those interests 
were threatened by it, even though it represented the 
opinion of a clear majority of the Irish people. 

By the end of November it had become apparent (i) that 
the Nationalist vote did represent a clear majority of the 
Irish people, and (2) that the Liberal party were not strong 
enough even to recover, still less to retain, office without its 
assistance. Accordingly on December 17, a mysterious but 



A 'REGRETFUL' VOTE 203 

evidently inspired communique appeared in a provincial 
newspaper, to the effect that Mr, Gladstone, impressed by 
the consideration of fact (i) was prepared to examine the 
claim of the Irish Nationalist party to Home Rule. Fact 
(2) was not expressly referred to in this communication, and 
indeed has never been mentioned since by either Mr. 
Gladstone or his followers — though there are some among 
their opponents who hold the opinion founded, plausibly 
enough, on Mr. Gladstone's above quoted appeal to the 
constituencies, that (2) and not (i) was the parent cause of 
the Home Rule Bill. 

On January 26, five days after Parliament met, the 
leader of the Liberal party, together with a large majority of 
his followers and all the eighty-six Parnellites, were sud- 
denly stricken with a pang of ' regret ' at the discovery that 
' no measures ' had been ' announced by her Majesty for the 
present relief of the agricultural classes, and especially for 
affording facilities to the agricultural labourers and others 
in the rural districts to obtain allotments and small holdings 
on equitable terms as to rent and security of tenure.' By 
an early hour in the morning of the 29th, their regret 
became so poignant that they went into the lobby and 
voted in favour of an amendment moved by Mr. Jesse 
CoUings to the above effect, with the result that the Govern- 
ment were placed in a minority of 79. 

In the course of the next few days, Lord Salisbury and 
his colleagues resigned. Mr. Gladstone was sent for by the 
Queen, and by Saturday, February 6, he had succeeded in 
forming the Cabinet of the third Administration, whose 
various members accepted office under him on the basis of 
an understanding, that the Home Rule Question should be 
submitted to ' examination and inquiry.' 



204 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

In the first week in April, after just two months spent in 
this process, and after having ' shed ' two of his colleagues, 
Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan, in the course 
of it, Mr. Gladstone introduced his ' Bill to amend the pro- 
vision for the future Government of Ireland.' On June 7 
the motion for the second reading of the measure was 
rejected by 341 votes against 311. 

On June 26 Parliament was dissolved, and at the General 
Election which followed, the bulk of the English con- 
stituencies, either convinced of the rashness and impolicy 
of Mr. Gladstone's Bill, or bewildered by his 'lightning 
change ' of opinions, or merely disgusted by his begin- 
ning (and ending) his legislative record with Ireland, instead 
of with cows and acres, turned against him, and the 
Unionist party came back from the polling booths with a 
clear majority of 118 over Gladstonians and Parnellites 
combined. Mr. Gladstone resigned — in this case as a matter 
of course, though it has now become the rule in all cases of 
defeat at the polls — without meeting the new Parliament, 
and the leader of the Conservatives received the royal 
command to form a Government. 



205 



CHAPTER XIII 

Lord Salisbury enters upon his second Administration — Proposal to 
Lord Hartington — The Premier as Foreign Secretary — His record 
— Qualifications for the office — Personal characteristics — Eloquence 
and wit — Relations to his party and the country — His present posi- 
tion — His Ministerial career as a whole. 

Lord Salisbury's entrance upon his second Administration 
was auspiciously preceded by an act of high public spirit 
and patriotism. Recognising alike the signal services 
rendered to the nation by the Liberal Unionists in the 
recent crisis and the vital importance of insuring their 
steady co-operation with the Conservative party, not only 
on the Irish Question, but on all important political issues, 
the leader of that party naturally desired to convert the 
informal political alliance between the two Unionist groups 
into a formal Administrative Coalition. To that end he 
signified his readiness to waive, if it would facilitate matters, 
his own claim to the Premiership, and accept a post in a 
mixed Unionist Government under Lord Hartington. 

The magnanimous offer was, however, declined. Lord 
Hartington held the opinion, which the event has justified, 
that the tie of a common fealty to the Union required 
no strengthening by any official bonds ; and the Cabinet 
ultimately constructed by Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister 
was and remained, until, on the resignation of Lord 



206 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

Randolph Churchill in the following December, it was 
reinforced by the accession of Mr. Goschen, of a purely 
Conservative complexion. Its legislative record is still 
incomplete, and the time therefore has not yet arrived 
for a final review of its performances in this kind — though 
it is not even now too soon to say that the judgment 
which awaits its legislation from the voice of all those 
who refuse to allow Opportunism to define Conservatism, 
can by no possibility be wholly favourable. 

But the administrative history of the Government is 
already to all intents and purposes closed ; its general 
character at any rate is not likely to be materially affected 
by anything which may happen before the dissolution ; and 
considering how great a part has been played in that history 
by the present Prime Minister, a brief recital of it may well 
conclude this sketch of his public career. 

Two, and in all probability two only, of the names of those 
Ministers who held power in England from 1886 to 1892 
will be associated in future with its history : the names of 
Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour. The administration of 
Ireland by the present Chief Secretary to the Lord 
Lieutenant will live in our annals as a splendid and 
invigorating example of what — even in a day of declining 
Authority — can be accomplished for the cause of order, 
good government, and public honesty by a just and firm 
policy in the hands of a cool-headed and courageous man. 
And Lord Salisbury's management of our foreign afiairs has 
in like manner and no less reassuringly shown how potent 
an influence, even in a world which has left her far behind 
as a military Power, can still be wielded by our country, 
with a steady and skilful hand at the helm. 

The association of the Premiership, even relieved of 



AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE 2o; 

Treasury work, with the office of Foreign Secretary is not 
an arrangement wholly to be commended. The duties of 
the Foreign Department are in these times too exacting, 
not to say exhausting, to allow him who is charged with 
them to exercise that general supervision of Ministerial 
policy which is to-day, perhaps, more needed than it ever 
was. It has often been said— and the saying, I am able 
to state, obtains the full assent of the present Foreign 
Secretary — that it will never again be possible, unless, 
indeed, after a revolution in our Parliamentary system, to 
choose that Minister from the House of Commons. He 
simply could not combine the discharge of his onerous 
Parliamentary functions with the efficient performance of 
his departmental duties. Even a member of the Upper 
House who takes these duties seriously will find them 
arduous enough. They occupy the whole time not allotted 
to his very light Parliamentary work ; they cut him off in 
a great measure from social recreation ; in the busiest 
season of the year they only too probably encroach upon 
his hours of exercise and rest. 

Since the last tenure of the post by the late Lord 
Granville, who, for his own part, religiously observed the 
traditions of a more easy-going age, there have been two 
indefatigable workers at the Foreign Office ; and the 
testimony of Lord Rosebery and Lord Salisbury to the 
severity of its demands is in perfect accord. The daily 
spell of work which the former is said to have done in 
Whitehall was such as to constitute what is known to 
athletes as ' a record,' while his successor is understood to 
have found the Foreign Office the only Ministerial depart- 
ment which has succeeded in completely ousting the rivalry 
of his chemical laboratory. It is difficult, as has been 



208 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

hinted, to believe that a Minister so full of work can find 
time to study the general political situation in its almost 
daily changes, or energy to direct and accommodate to it the 
tactics of his party. And it may be that Lord Salisbury's 
heroic attempt to combine two incompatible tasks has had 
its share in the history of more than one untoward episode 
in the career of the present Administration. 

On the other hand, it is fair to admit that an English 
statesman who unites the special knowledge of a Foreign 
Secretary with the authority "of a Premier, may well com- 
mand an influence beyond the reach of either of these two 
Ministers in severalty ; and it is certain that, whether this 
be or be not a contributory cause, Lord Sahsbury's influ- 
ence as the exponent of English policy to Foreign Powers 
far transcends that of any Minister of our time. 

That he should have taken this branch of politics for 
his province will surprise no student of his career. From 
his earliest days in Parliament, we have seen how keen an 
interest he took in foreign affairs ; how intelligently and, 
most notable point of all, with what singular independence 
of judgment, he studied them. It is not every politician of 
eight-and-twenty who would have supported the union 
of the Danubian Principalities against one of the strongest 
of prevaiHng superstitions ; and of those who might do so 
at least nine in ten would have been animated by that 
youthful desire to affront established beliefs which subsides 
with maturer years. But the Eastern European policy 
which Lord Robert Cecil supported in 1858 is substantially 
identical with that for which he contended in 1878, and 
which he regards with equal hopefulness in 1891. From the 
almost exultant tone in which, in his speech at the Mansion 
House last year, he referred to the present and (if the luck 



AS FOREIGN MINISTER 209 

of events is not too unkind to her) the future of Bulgaria, it 
is easy to see that he regards that Principality as a no less effi- 
cient barrier against the advance of Russia in the direction of 
Constantinople than the kingdom of Roumania, and holds 
that the one like the other is a silently eloquent justification 
of the policy which he has constantly advocated for more 
than thirty years. 

His reputation, however, as a Foreign Minister is 
fortunately independent of the particular line of action taken 
by him on any such keenly controversial question as this: 
For us the time has gone by — it has passed away, indeed, 
for all nations under constitutional government — when any 
Minister of Foreign Affairs could win favour, or do anything 
but court confusion, by having such a thing as a ' line of 
action' of his own. The main virtue, one might say the 
sole safety, for the foreign policy of a country under Parlia- 
mentary government with a democratic suffrage lies in its 
continuity ; and the success or failure of the Foreign Minister 
of such a country will depend on the prudence, tact, and 
firmness with which he applies its accepted principles. 

How wide a margin for success or failure these conditions, 
narrow though they seem, allow — how brilliantly it is possible 
for a Foreign Minister of England to succeed, and how 
deplorably to fail, while keeping in either case strictly to 
them, is a matter of which some of Lord Salisbury's political 
opponents display an ignorance comical if genuine and 
cynical if assumed. Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues 
succeeded to power in 1880 with the avowed and even 
boasted intention of ' reversing the policy ' of their prede- 
cessors. How they fared in this adventure during their 
disastrous five years of office we all know, and they them- 
selves still ruefully remember ; but what they apparently 



2IO THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

have yet to learn is that it was not so much their acts as 
the spirit of them — not so much their reversals of Lord 
Beaconsfield's policy in the sense of undoing his specific 
work as the world-wide belief that they were to be bullied 
and cajoled by any foreign nation, or faction of a foreign 
nation, which cared to do so — that wrought their ruin. 

Hence it is highly mirth-provoking to hear them now 
congratulating Lord Salisbury on his having attempted no 
reversals of policy on his own account, but contenting 
himself with, as they put it, pursuing 'just that line of con- 
duct in foreign affairs which Mr. Gladstone himself would 
have pursued had he been in office.' These innocent critics 
evidently suppose that the mark aimed at in a foreign 
policy is of far more importance than the skill of the 
marksman, and that, this mark being by hypothesis the 
same whether Lord Sahsbury or Mr. Gladstone despatches 
the projectile, it matters little which of them shoots. It is 
earnestly to be hoped that they will have no future oppor- 
tunity of experimentalising on this precious theory. 

No ; the ' continuity of our foreign policy ' is doubtless 
a principle of much value, for the reason that it is most 
desirable, for the prevention of dangerous misunderstandings, 
that all foreign Powers should know what England is driving 
at, or in other words what interests of her own she expects 
her Ministers to protect, what designs or demands on the 
part of other nations to resist. But to acquaint foreign 
Powers with this is only the beginning, only the condition 
precedent, of a successful foreign policy : the measure of its 
success depends on the extent to which these Powers recog- 
nise the expediency of reckoning with its requirements ; and 
this again depends largely upon the amount of influence 
exerted by the personal quahties of the Foreign Minister, 



HIS DIPLOMATIC. RECORD 211 

Lord Salisbury succeeded to a handsome, even a munifi- 
cent, legacy of international difficulties bequeathed to him 
by his predecessors in office; and a whole crop of other 
external questions, less serious but sufficiently vexatious, 
have since then accumulated upon his hands. There were 
differences with France and Turkey in Egypt ; with Germany 
and Portugal in Eastern and Southern Africa ; with France 
again in Newfoundland ; with the United States in Behring's 
Sea : and there is not one of these differences capable of 
immediate or of early composition which either has not 
been or is not in a fair way to be composed. Our difficulty 
with France in Egypt was from the nature of the case 
impossible of immediate adjustment. Lord Salisbury's 
maintenance of our position in that country has been 
resolute without being provocative ; on the Newfoundland 
question his attitude has been studiously conciliatory. 

Germany, who had taken advantage of our Egyptian 
pre- occupation under Mr. Gladstone's management of the 
national affairs to steal a march upon us in Eastern Africa, 
has shown a marked readiness for reasonable compromise 
when approached by Mr. Gladstone's successor ; and the 
delimitation of the spheres of English and German terri- 
tory and influence in that Continent is one of the most 
successful works of international negotiation on the grand 
scale, to which an Enghsh Minister has ever set his hand. 

The territorial pretensions of Portugal, which presented 
difficulties of their own, have been met and disposed 
of with a mixture of firmness and moderation which is 
beyond praise, and the same statesman who has known how 
to make good the national claims in face of the great Powers 
of Europe, has also had the moral courage to warn one 
of the smallest against presuming upon its weakness. In 

P 2 



212 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

the New World he has, with equal resolution, rebuked the 
petulance of a British colony and the menacing Chauvinism 
of an American Minister. 

And the tranquillity in which all these results have been 
achieved is as remarkable as their completeness. That 
ceaseless anxiety in which the country under Mr. Glad- 
stone awaited its daily news from abroad, and endeavoured 
to brace itself each morning to face some new danger 
to its interests, some fresh humiliation for its pride, is a 
thing of the almost forgotten — one hopes that the next 
election may not show it to have been the quite forgotten — 
past. 

There is no very recondite secret about those powers 
and qualities in the present Prime Minister to which we have 
owed this blessed period of repose. The character of Lord 
Salisbury's mind, the bent of his genius, the inspiration of 
his lineage, have all alike contributed to fit him for that work 
on behalf of his country which a fortunate turn of the 
wheel of politics allotted to him in 1878. What might have 
been his future if, at the crisis of the Eastern Question, 
Lord Derby could have screwed his courage to the sticking- 
place of action, it is impossible to say : but that one ' soft 
spot ' in the then Foreign Secretary's composition decided the 
question, and his competitor passed him in the race. 

The power which fortune thus put into the fittest hands 
in England has been nobly used. Lord Salisbury was close 
upon fifty years of age before he found his true political 
vocation, but with every year that he has since passed in 
office, he has more and more convincingly proved to his 
countrymen that it has been found indeed. One thinks of 
him as Foreign Secretary far rather than as chief director, in 
his character of Prime Minister, of our domestic affairs ; and 



HIS TRUE SPHERE 21 3 

that is because one instinctively feels that it is in the former 
capacity alone that he feels himself in his true element. 
There has always been, or at any rate there has always 
seemed to be, a certain effort visible in his discharge of the 
duties of the party leader. He has made concessions — ade- 
quate, perhaps, but certainly no more than adequate — to 
the modern demand upon a Prime Minister for platform 
oratory ; but though he performs his duties in that regard 
with conscientious spirit and vigour while he is about them, 
it cannot but strike the observer that his performance is a 
matter of necessity and not of choice — that he mounts the 
• stump ' with reluctance and descends it with relief. A com- 
parison between the number of occasions on which the late 
and the present Prime Minister have respectively addressed 
popular audiences would yield decidedly disparate re- 
sults. 

It is not fanciful to suppose that one of the attractions of 
the Foreign Office for him is that of all the departments of the 
State, it is that to which popular criticism and popular 
demands have obtained least access, and the Minister in 
charge of which is the least frequently called upon to 
explain and justify his proceedings before popular audiences. 
It is possible, even in these democratic days, for a successful 
and trusted Foreign Secretary to feel something of that 
proudly inspiriting consciousness of power and that elevating 
sense of responsibility which nerved the will while it steadied 
the judgment of the great Ministers who have represented 
this country before the world in historic periods of the past ; 
and one may suspect that it needs some such stimulus to 
Lord Salisbury's imagination, to raise his interest in contem- 
porary politics to the requisite pitch. A just conception of 
our Empire and of the stupendous task of directing its 



214 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

destiny, may well stir in him the blood of his Elizabethan 
ancestors ; and it is no doubt partly because he impresses 
other nations as a statesman hereditarily dedicated to the 
maintenance of our Imperial power and security that he 
wields the influence which is his. European Courts and 
Cabinets must know that to whatever external forces of re- 
straint or deflection his foreign policy, like that of all other 
English Ministers, may be exposed, there is no public man 
in England who stands surety for English interests and 
English honour under heavier recognisances of blood and 
name. Nor can it, I think, be doubted that to the better 
informed and more educated body of Lord Salisbury's 
countrymen, this constitutes the chief source of their con- 
tentment with his rule. It is in this aspect, and probably 
in this alone, that he impresses their imagination : nay, it 
is only in this, perhaps, that he even shapes himself as a 
definite figure in their minds. 

In no other capacity at any rate does it seem likely that 
Lord Salisbury will leave any enduring mark on the annals 
of his time. Otherwise considered, it is no doubt a suffi- 
ciently stately and imposing, but it is not an original, an 
interesting, or in a word, a ' characteristic ' individuality. 
The Premier has all the gifts and attainments, all the 
natural and acquired advantages, which have traditionally 
commanded the respect and admiration of Englishmen, 
but, save as a Foreign Minister, none of those which 
win for their possessor a lasting place in the national 

history. - 

His case, indeed, is not a little remarkable as showing 
how varied and manifold an array of distinguished qualities 
may yet fail to give assurance of posthumous fame to their 
possessor. Lord Salisbury's brilliant intellectual faculties. 



ORATORY AND WIT 21 5 

his high culture, his great powers as a debater, his mascu- 
line common sense, his trained political acumen, his wide 
knowledge and ripe experience of affairs, would secure him 
a prominent position in the public life of any European 
nation ; and they have received ample recognition here. 
But singly, or in conjunction, they have not availed to win 
him a place among those statesmen whose figures stand 
out in clear relief on the tablet of the national recollection 
when the men themselves have departed. _ 

He is undoubtedly an orator of no mean power. He 
has a commanding presence, a resonant voice, and a delivery 
which if somewhat too uniformly measured and solemn, yet 
for that very reason lends itself almost as effectively 
to the utterances of that grave and deliberate irony of 
which he is a master, as to those weighty expositions 
of poHcy in which he also excels. Yet his eloquence 
is wanting in that nameless charm of the sympathetic 
which is exerted over the hearer by far lesser orators 
than he. 

And there is a certain lack of the same quality in his wit. 
Lord Beaconsfield's well-remembered criticism of ' the noble 
lord's invective ' as wanting in ' finish,' was, from one point 
of view, so unapt as to be almost inept. ' Finish,' in the 
artistic sense, is exactly what it does not want. That literary 
skill which was displayed by Lord Salisbury between i860 
and 1866 in many a trenchant contribution to the ' Quarterly,' 
and which is understood to have found a yet earlier field in 
more ephemeral productions of the press, has stood him in 
good stead as a debater. It is not the fact, therefore, that 
his epigrams have ever lacked literary polish : they have 
always had enough of that and to spare. The shafts of the 
Parliamentary orator come barbed and fledged from the 



2l6 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

quiver of the political pamphleteer, and they seldom fail 
to hit their mark. But the mark itself is not always dis- 
creetly chosen, and the arrow has sometimes seemed to go 
deeper into the target than the archer intended. 

The ' finish ' which Lord Salisbury's invective lacks is 
a question, not? of the manner but of the matter of ex- 
pression — not of the ' how to say it ' but of the ' what to 
say.' It is not the literary taste which chastens style, but 
the moral sense of measure which moderates the substance 
of the thing said, that is at fault. Many a more bitter taunt 
than any that Lord Salisbury has ever uttered has given less 
offence than some of his ; and that, because it has succeeded 
in hitting, where his has failed to hit, the mood of the 
audience to whom it was addressed. The famous ' Apology 
to the attorneys,' referred to in the foregoing pages, was a 
trifling, and, on the whole, a harmless gibe, of which absurdly 
too much has been made by Gladstonian critics, but in a 
small way it illustrates Lord Salisbury's habit of jestingly 
striking a note which jars on the current sentiment of his 
hearers. 

Want of sympathy between a speaker and his audience is 
apt to act and react on both alike, and upon the hearers with 
perhaps disproportionate effect. Their temperature soon 
falls even lower than his : and this no doubt is one among 
the main reasons why the feelings entertained towards Lord 
Salisbury by the masses of his fellow-countrymen, though 
they abound in respect and admiration, are never touched 
by enthusiasm. A rooted and honourable aversion from 
the arts of the demagogue is pushed by him to the verge of 
the excessive. ' Popularity-hunting ' is a sport so repug- 
nant to him that he almost seems to shun the coverts where: 
he might fall in with the game without pursuit; Even in his 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 2l7 

intercourse with the followers by whom he is immediately 
surrounded, he is prevented by a certain reserve, not so 
much of manner as of temperament, from establishing those 
relations of cordiality which modern party leaders usually 
seek, as a mere matter of policy, to create. 

That he fights the political battle at some disadvantage 
to himself and his party on this account is not of course to 
be denied. One can well understand the impatience with 
which his attitude must often inspire the ' party politician,' 
— that is to say, the, man whose vision is bounded by a 
'next election,' to be won at any cost. But whether the 
loss of the party politician may not be the gain of the 
country is a question upon which those who are not party 
politicians of this type may be permitted to entertain their 
own opinion. To such it may possibly appear that the 
party politician has mistaken one of Lord Salisbury's merits 
for a defect. They may hold that while he did well in not 
' throwing up the game,' in the manner of the French Irre- 
concilable, after the great catastrophe of 1867, he did still 
better in refusing to play it unreservedly on the principles of 
his adversaries. He has made ample concession to the re- 
quirements of the new regime — how ample let the programme 
put forth by him in the famous Newport Speech delivered 
on the eve of the election of 1885 bear witness ; and in the 
judgment of all such Conservatives as can look beyond * the 
next election,' the process in question has been carried to its 
utmost legitimate lengths. 

If Lord Salisbury pauses and compels his party to pause 
here, he will have deserved wholly well of his country. 
Its debt of gratitude to him will indeed be enhanced 
by those very circumstances which are thought to detract 
from his efficiency as a party leader. For the struggles 



31 8 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 

and victories of party are evidently not to him what they 
are to most other men. His political ambitions, one may 
suppose, are by this time fully satisfied ; his health is 
not of the most robust ; his tastes are those rather of the 
student and the philosopher than of the man of action. 
But he has rightly felt that his authority, his experience, 
and his powers give the measure of his duty, and forbid 
him, at any rate for the present, to quit the post which 
he occupies. Let me not be understood to refer merely 
to his Ministerial office. It is far more important that 
he should continue to lead the Conservative party on 
Conservative principles, than that he and his colleagues 
should remain Ministers of the Crown ; and it is to be 
hoped that no pressure from his followers, no counsels 
of any colleague, will prevail upon him to shape his 
policy as though the latter object had precedence of the 
former. 

There are some who think that he has already yielded 
too much • to those whose one idea of the true policy 
of a Conservative party in a democracy is to give larger 
promissory notes than the demagogue — whether with or 
without the design, not long since recommended to them, 
of subsequently repudiating their signatures. Chapter and 
verse can undeniably be given for the charge of having so 
yielded, but the error which it imputes is, after all, a solitary 
lapse. On the whole, and as it at present stands. Lord 
Salisbury's record is that of an English statesman who, while 
directing the affairs of his country abroad with singular 
skill and judgment, has also guided its domestic policy 
in the paths of wisdom and equity, and, though loyally sub- 
mitting to the ' will of the majority ' in all things lawful, has 
held it his first duty to maintain the just rights of every 



A RECORD AT STAKE 219 

class, however small a minority it may constitute, in the 
State. Such a record should surely be prized by its possessor 
far above the honours of any party victory, and an electoral 
triumph won at the cost of its integrity would indeed be 
dearly purchased. 



INDEX 



ABE 

ABERDEE^f, Lord, coalition ministry of 

1852, 6-9, 14 
Adrianople, Russians and, 163 
Afghan War, the, 153, 178-183 
■ — frontier dispute, 201 
Africa, Germany in Eastern, 211 

— Portugal in South, 211. See also 
' South ' 

Agricultural classes, 203 

— Holdings Act, 127 
Alderson, Sir E. H., 19 
Argyll, Duke of, 182 
Armenia, 154, 170 

Army Organisation Bill, 112 
Arrears Bill, the, 195 
Arrow, the, 16 
Artisan Dwellings Act, 127 



Balfour, Mr., 206 

Ballot Bill, 112 

— Mr. Berkeley and the, 18 

Beach, Sir M. Hicks-, 200 

Beaconsfield, Lord. See ' Disraeli ' 

Behring's Sea, the United States and, 

211, 212 
Bengal famine, the, 117-118 
Berkeley, Mr., 18 
Berlin, Treaty of, 129, 171-178 
Black Sea, the, 13-15 
Bradford, Lord Salisbury at, 154 
Bright, Mr., 16, 35 ; and Life Peerages 

Bill, 108 
Buckingham, Duke of, 79 
Budget, proposals for 1860-61, 38, 43, 

44 
Bulgaria, 20, 141, 145, 178 ; atrocities 
in, 130, 150 



Cabul, 178-182 
Cairns, Lord, 190, 193, 197, 198 
Campbell, Sir George, 117, 118 
Candahar, retirement from, igo 
Carnarvon, Lord, 75, 76, 79, 116, 117 ; 

and the Russo-Turkish War, 160-164 
Cavagnari, Major, 179 



DER 

Cecil, Lord Robert. See ' Marquis of 

Salisbury ' 
Chamberlain, Mr., i8g, 204 

— Sir Nevile, 179, 180 
Chichester, Dean of, 4 
China, war with, 16 

Church in Ireland, the, 94-97 ; the 
Suspensory Bill, 98-104 ; Disesta- 
blishment Bill, 104 

— of England, Public Worship Regula- 
tion Bill, 120-126 

— rates, abolition of, 20. 37 
Churchill, Lord R., 37, 195, 200, 206 
' Circular,' the Salisbury, 167-173 
Clarendon, Lord, 9, loi 
Coalition ministry of 1852, 6-9, 14 
Cobden, R., and free trade, 8 ; loss of 

seat, 16 
Coleridge, Mr., 87 
Collier, Sir R., 113 
CoUings, Mr. Jesse, 203 
Commons, Rights of House of, 40-43 
Compensation Bill, 188 
Conference at Constantinople, 136-148 
Conington, Professor, 3, 4 
Conservative party in 1852, 6 
Conspiracy, English law of, 19 ; Act for 

amendment of, 127 
Constantinople, 8, 9 ; conference at, 

136-148 
Cranborne, Lord. See 'Marquis ot 

Salisbury ' 
Crimean War, 9, 12-15 
Cyprus, island of, 166 



Daily News, the, and Lord Salisbury 

135. 136 
Danish Question, the, 46 
Danubian Principalities, the, 20, 208 
Delphic oracle. Lord Salisbury on the, 

IIO-III 

De Mauley, Lord, 152, 175 

Derby, Lord, 7, 14, 19, 23, "31, 61, 6 
64, 68, 76, 79 ; death of, 108 ; 116, 135, 
139, 140, 149, 157-158, 163-166, 186, 

191, 2X2 



222 



THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 



DIS 

Disestablishment of Irish Church, 104 

Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), 7 ; and the 
Crimea, 13-15 ; Reform Bill of 1859, 
27-31 ; and Lord Salisbury, 45-46 ; 
and tbe Redistribution Bih, 56 ; Re- 
form Bill of 1867, 63-92 ; _ relations 
with Lord Salisbury, 93 ; in power, 
116; and Public Worship Regulation 
Bill, 120-126 ; Sir William Harcourt, 
125 ; Eastern Question, 130-148 ; 
Russo-Turkish War, 149-166 ; Treaty 
of Berlin, 173-178 ; death of, 190- 
192 ; and Lord Salisbury, 215 

Disturbance Bill, the, 186-188 

' Dual Control,' the, 192-195 

Dunkellin, Lord, 56-58 



Eastern Question, the, 129-148, 212 ; 
the Russo-Turkish War, 149-165 ; the 
Salisbury Circular, 168-173; the Ber- 
lin Conference, 174-178 

East India Company, abolition of, 20 

Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 119 

Education, elementary, 16 

Egypt, affairs in, ig6, 201, 211 

Elcho, Lord, 87 

Elections, Bill to amend the procedure 
at Parliamentary, 17-19 

England and the Berlin Conference, 
173-178 

Essay on Parliamentary Reform, 21- 

27 , ,. . 

Ewelme, the living of, 113 



Famine in India, the, 117, 118 

Fenians, the, 187, 188 

Foreign Office, Lord Salisbury's policy 

at, 206-214 
Forster, Mr., 188 ; and Protection Bill, 

190; 19s 
France, misunderstanding with, 19 
— and Newfoundland, 211 
Franchise Bill, 23, 28 ; Mr. Gladstone's, 

49-60, 196-198, 201 ; Mr. Disraeli's, 

74-78 
Free Trade, 6 ; Cohden and, 8 ; Peel 

and, 64-65 



Gaikwar of Baroda, the, 128 
Gallipoli, Russia and, 162, 163 
Germany and Eastern Africa, 211 
Gladstone, Mr., on Lord Salisbury in 
1890, i; and the ' Coalition Ministry, 
7 ; and Lord Salisbury's maiden 
speech, 12 ; and Lord Salisbury in 
i860, 37, 45, 46 ; the Paper Duties 
Repeal Bill, 42 ; the Reform Bill, 49- 
60, 74; household suffrage, 85-92; the 
Irish Church, 94-97 ; and Suspensory 
Bill, 98-104 ; Disestablishment of the 



KNI 

Irish Church, 104-106 ; Army Organi- 
sation Bill, 112 ; Irish University Bill, 
113-114, 116 ; and Public Worship 
Regulation Bill, 120-126 ; the Eastern 
Question, 134 ; Midlothian campaign 
1880, 182, 183 ; Irish Land Bill, 190, 
194 ; Egypt, 196-199 ; and 1885 Elec- 
tion, 201, 202 ; and Home Rule, 203, 
204 ; in power 1880, 209, 210 

Gordon, General, 196-199 

GortschakofF, Prince, 149, 150, 158, 159, 
162, 163, 171, 173 

Goschen, Mr., 206 

Gourko, General, 155 

Graham, Sir James, 7 

Grain trade in India, 117, 118 

Granville, Lord, 31, 34 ; and Black Sea 
treaty, 113 ; 127, 182, 207 

Grey, Earl, 173, 186 

Grosvenor, Lord, and the Reform Bill, 
50-52, 56, 58, 87 

Gurney, Mr. Russell, 122 



Harcourt, Sir Wm., 123 ; Mr. Disraeli 

and, 125 
Hardy, Mr., 122 
Hartington, Lord, 31, 174, 205 
Harvey, Mr., 113 
Hatfield, 2 
Henley, Mr., 29 
Herbert, Sidney, 7 
Herries, Mr., 5 
Herzegovina, trouble in, 129 
Home Rule Bill, 203, 204 
Horsman, Mr., 88 
Household suffrage, Mr. Disraeli and, 

64-92 
Hyde Park exhibition of 1851, 8 
riots, 63 



Iddesleigh, Lord. See ' Sir Stafford 

Northcote ' 
Ignatieff, General, at Constantinople, 

137. 139. 141. 144. 147 
Income tax, 38 ; Mr. Gladstone and, 

^'4 . . 

India, famine in, 117, 118 

— the Suez Canal and, 149 
Ireland in 1869, state of, 109 

— affairs in, 185-igo ; Land Act, 194- 
196 

Irish Church, Mr. Gladstone and, 94-97 ; 
the Suspensory Bill, 98-104 ; Disesta- 
blishment Bill, 104; 

• — L^nd Act, 109-112 ; Bill, 190, 194-196 

— University Bill, 113, 116 

Khartoum, fall of, 197, 198 
Kilmainham compact, the, 195 
Knightley, Sir K., 58, 88 



INDEX 



223 



LAN 

Land Transfer Act, 127 

Lansdowne, Lord, 14, 186 

Layard, Mr., 163 

Life Peerages Bill, 107-108 

Liverpool, public meeting at, 51-52 

Loftus, Lord A., 162 

Lords, rights of the House of, 39-43 ; 
Lord Salisbury takes seat in the House 
of, 97 ; Lord Clarendon and, 101-103 

Lowe, Mr., 35, 59, 62, 68, 74, 88 



Majuba Hill, 190 

Mansel, Professor, 11 

Maps, Lord Salisbury on, 152, 153 

Midhat Pasha, 142, 146 

Midlothian campaign, Mr. Gladstone's, 

1880, 182-183 
Montagu, Lord R., 52 
Mountmorres, Lord, 188 



Napoleon IIL, 19 
Newfoundland, France and, 211 
Newport, speech at, 217 
Nicholas, Czar, and Constantinople, 8, 9 
Northbrook, Lord, 117, 118 
Northcote, Sir Stafford, 79, 174, 192, 
194, 195, 200 



OsMAN Pasha, defence of Plevna, 151, 

155-157 
'Oxford Essays of 1858, 21-27 
Oxford Union Society, 3-5 
— University, Lord Salisbury and, 108 
Bill, 9-12 



Pakington, Sir John, 7, 11, 15, 75-79 
Palmer, Sir Roundell (LordSelborne), 89 
Palmerston, Lord, 14, 16, 31, 33, 34, 36; 
and the Law of Conspiracy, 19 ; and 
the Paper Duties, 37 : death of, 47 
Paper Duties Repeal 13111, 37-44, loi 
Parliamentary Elections Bill, 17-19 

— Procedure Bill, 105-107 

— Reform, paper on, 21-27 
Parnell, Mr., 187, 202 

Peace Preservation Bill, 109 ; Act, 186, 

187 
Peel, General, 13, 15, 75-77, 79 

— Sir Robert, policy in 1846, 64, 65 
Pelly, Sir Lewis, 182 
Peshawur, 179 

Phoenix Park tragedy, 195 
Plevna, defence of, 151 ; tall of, 155-157 
Portugal and Southern Africa, 211 
Protection, 6 ; Peel and, 64 

— Bill, igo 

Public Health Act, 127 

— Worship Regulation Bill, 98, 120- 
126 

Pulling's, Mr. F. S., 'Life andSfeeches 
of the Marquis of S..Hsbury,' 4 



SAL 
' Quarterly Review,' the, 215 



Radetzky, General, 155 
Rates, abolition of Church, 20, 37 
Redistribution Bill, 56, 197, 198 
Reform, essay, ' The Theories of Parlia- 
mentary,' 21-27 
— Mr. Disraeli's Bill of 1859, 27-31 ; 
Lord J. Russell's Bill, 32-35 ; Bill of 
1866, 49-60; Mr. Disraeli's of 1867, 
63-92, 197 
Reformatory system, improvement of, 

16 
Reserves called out, the, 165, 166 
Richmond and Gordon, Duke of, 120, 

i73-i74> 193 . . 

Ritual, Royal Commission on, 98 

Roebuck, Mr., 12-15 

Rosebery, Lord, 207 

Roumania, 20, 21 

Royal Titles Bill, 128 

Russell, Lord John, and University 
Legislation, 9-12; 13; 14; Reform 
Bill, 31, 32-35, 71 ; the Brazilian diffi- 
culty, 46-47 ; Prime Minister, 48, 49, 
61 ; Life Peerages Bill, 107 

Russia, war with, 9, 12-15 i and Black 
Sea Treaty, 115 ; Eastern Question, 
129-148 ; and war with Turkey, 149- 
166 ; Treaty of Berlin, 168-176 ; and 
Afghanistan, 178-182 ; 208, 209 ; in 
Central Asia, 200, 201 



Salisbury, Marquis of, birth and an- 
cestry, 2-3 ; at Oxford, 3-5 ; enters 
Parliament, 5, 9 ", maiden speech^ 10- 
12 ; and Crimean War, 12-15 > Chinese 
War, 16 ; and Parliamentary elections, 
17-19 ; marriage of, 19 ; paper on 
' The Theories of Parliamentary Re- 
form,' 21-27 ; Reform Bill of 1859, 28- 
31 ; Paper Duties Repeal Bill, 37-44; 
becomes Lord Cranborne, 47 ; and 
Reform Bill of 1S66, 49-60 ; Secretary 
of State for India, 62, 116, 117 ; and 
Disraeli's Reform Bill 1867, 74-92 ; 
relations with Mr. Disraeli, 93 ; Irish 
Church, 94-97 ; succeeds to Mar- 
quisate, 97 ; oratory of, 07-98 ; and 
Suspensory Bill, 98-104 ; and Irish 
Church Disestablishment Bill, 104- 
106; and Life Peerages Bill, 105-108 : 
and Oxford University, 108 ; Irish 
Land Act,ic9-ii2;and Ballot Bill, 112; 
and famine in Bengal, 118 ; and Public 
Worship Regulation Bill, 120-126 ; ses- 
sions of 1874-76, 126-128 ; Eastern 
Question, 129-148 ; Russo-Turkish 
War, 149-166 ; appointed Foreign 
Secretary, 167 ; the Salisbury Circu- 
lar, 16S-173 ; the Treaty of Berlin, 
174-178 ; and Afghanistan, 178-183 ; 
and Disturbance Bill, 186-189 '• Prime 



224 



THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY 



SAL 

Minister, 192-194 ; and fall of Khar- 
toum, 199 ; return to power, 200 ; and 
1885 election, 201-202 ; resignation of, 
203 ; Second Administration, 205- 
206 ; Foreign Office Policy, 206-210 ; 
diplomatic record, 211-214 ; oratory 
and wit, 215-217 ; personal character- 
istics, 217-219. See also ' Speeches ' 

Schouvaloff, Count, 140, 173 

Seats Bill, 54, 58 

Servia, the principality of, 130, 138, 140 

Shaftesbury, Lord, 98 ; and Suspensory 
Bill, 103 ; 120 

Shere Ali, 178-182 

Shirley, Professor, 3, 4 

SkobelefF, General, 155 

Small Tenements Act, 81 

Soudan, affairs in the, ig6 

South Africa, 201 ; Transvaal, 190 

Speeches: at Oxford Union, 3, 4 ; 
maiden — on the Universities Bill, 10- 
12 ; on the Crimea, 12-15 ; on the 
Budget proposals for 1860-61, 38 ; on 
the privileges of the House of Lords, 
42-45, 216 ; on the Brazilian difficulty, 
46-47 ; on the Franchise Bill, 52-54 ; 
at Stamford, 62-63 ; on Household 
Suffrage, 82-86 ; on the Irish Church, 
97 ; on the Suspensory Bill, 98-103 ; 
on Irish Land Act, iio-iii ; on Public 
Worship Regulation Bill, 121, 124- 
126 ; ' man proposes,' 127 ; at Guild- 
hall Banquet, on the Eastern Ques- 
tion, 133-134 ; at the Constantinople 
Conference, 143, 144 ; on 'maps,' 152, 
153 ; at Bradford, 154 ; on Afghan 



WOL 

matters, 182 ; on the Disturbance 
Bill, _iS6, 187 ; at Taunton, 188 ; at 
Birmingham on crime and outrage, 
188, 189 ; at Mansion House, 1890, 
208, 209 ; at Newport, 217 

Stamford, Lord R. Cecil elected for, 5, 
9, 16, 62 

Stanley, Lord, 51, 58 

Suez Canal, 149 

Suleiman Pasha, 155 

Suspensory Bill of Irish Church, 98-104 



Taunton, Lord Salisbury at, 188 

Ten Minutes Bill, the, 78 

T/te Times and Reform, 48-49 

' Theories of Parliamentary Reform,' 

the, paper by Lord Salisbury, 21-27 
Transvaal, 190 
Treaty of Berlin, 129, 171-178 

San Stefano, 165, 171, 172, 174 

Trevelyan, Sir George, 204 
Turkey, 20 

— and Eastern Question, 129-148 

— and war with Russia, 149-166 

— and the Treaty of Berlin, 168-178 



United States, and Behring's Sea, 
211, 212 



Walpole, Mr. Spencer, 7, 29, 58 
Wellesley, Colonel, 159 
Wolseley, Lord, 196 



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